The Taming Read online

  He snorted. “The last guy whose kitchen you got a knife from ended up with it in his neck.”

  “You threw it.”

  “You gave it to me.” He raised a brow. “Eeffoc?”

  “Please.” She dropped the chunk of bread on the plate, watching avidly while he pressed a series of flat buttons on a wall panel.

  The rich, heady scent filled the air, and after a moment, dark liquid filled a mug.

  He turned to the sink, where he filled the cup of flowers with water.

  “Why are you being nice?”

  He grunted and crossed to the doorway. “Be ready to go in ten to fifteen minutes.”

  “Go?” Go where? “A-as in take off?”

  “As in out there.” He tilted his head toward the hatch at the end of the passageway.

  “Outside? Why?”

  “There’s something I need to do.”

  “Couldn’t I just stay here?”

  “No.”

  She tried offering a sweet smile. “Please.”

  The dimple flashed—not a happy one, but not an angry one either. A dubious one maybe, and he set down his mug. “Fine. You can stay. I’ll tie you to the bed. It should take me five, maybe six hours total.”

  “No, thank you.” She tore off another chunk of bread. “I think I’ll come after all.”

  He exhaled a laugh. “I’d suggest you do whatever you did with your clothes yesterday to make them... smaller. It’s hot out. Ten minutes.” He glanced back at her. “We’ll call your future-mate before we go.”

  She sucked in a breath. “Agammo? Oh, thank you!”

  He quirked a brow, but left silently.

  She tossed her bread down on the counter and raced to her chamber to change. Less than five minutes later, she found him again in his seat in the bridge at the front of the ship.

  He’d pulled his hair back in a bun and finally put on a shirt, thank the heavens. Another of those tight, thin white ones. It did little to hide all those ominous muscles, and quite a bit of the black tattoo still curled up his collarbone and wrapped around his neck, but it was something. He was pressing buttons on the comm portion of the console.

  She crossed the room to stand beside him, eager to get a closer look at the complicated operating system of the ship.

  “What are the numerics?”

  She told him, watching from beneath her lashes, as the holographic communications system came to life. It wasn’t all that different from the Argenti system, though the controls were smaller with only a sleek dial. Vestigi numbers in glowing red gleamed to life under his fingers.

  The line buzzed and buzzed, but no one answered. Her heart sank. Where could Agammo be?

  Torum pushed a button and terminated the connection. He must have gotten bored.

  She chewed her lip. “Could we try my father?” Maybe he would help now that she was genuinely in trouble.

  His gaze sharpened. “Sure.”

  He entered in the numerics she gave him. She wiped her palms on her dress.

  She tried to shake away the image of her father’s irritable face the last time they’d spoken, the way he’d brushed aside her every argument. Maybe this time, he’d listen.

  She had to try at least.

  Torum lounged against the console, just offscreen from the holo while the comm chattered. He crossed his arms and his ankles, face unreadable.

  The holo burst to life in a sweep of pale light, and her father’s head appeared, stony eyed and tight lipped. “Klymeni.”

  His voice was always so harsh, as if he spat the words rather than spoke them.

  She flinched. “Father, hello.”

  In the holo, his eyes narrowed, tight and gray, and he shook his head tersely. “By the gods, daughter. What are you wearing?”

  Her cheeks heated instantly, and she bent at the knees to pull her breasts down below the screen and out of his view.

  He didn’t give her any time to answer, however. “What happened with Spiro Willo?”

  Torum stepped forward with an irritable frown and adjusted the holo, so she was only visible to her father from the neck up.

  She rose from her awkward crouch. “Is he okay?”

  “He’ll live. What happened?”

  The lump in her throat made swallowing difficult. “I left.”

  “You did it deliberately?” He made an ugly face, mouth agape, brows low. “The Vestige mongrel didn’t abduct you?”

  “Mongrel?” Torum whispered, sounding almost impressed, and she ignored him.

  “I told you I wouldn’t marry him. Agammo and I—”

  “Agammo? That little shite! His father is opposing the war effort now. I won’t hear any more of this nonsense, Klymeni. Bonding will give your life purpose. Spiro is a good man from a good family. This is important.”

  “I know it’s important, Father. It’s my life.”

  “Grow up, you little fool.” His lips hardened. “Bonding is life.”

  “Not if it’s with a man I don’t want.”

  “You don’t know what you want.” Again, the crash of his fist on the desk. “The Bonding will make you happy.”

  “Agammo and I—”

  “No more talk of Agammo. His father has been babbling about morality and suing Vesta for peace, the coward.”

  Torum’s boot scraped the floor behind her, and she glanced his way. His dimples flickered, his eyes tight.

  Her father’s face reddened, and she knew the look in his eyes well.

  She took a long, slow breath. “Agammo is kind and gentle an—”

  Torum made an amused sound in his throat.

  “Silence, Klymeni.” Her father leaned forward, so his head nearly doubled in size in the holo, quivering with anger. His right eye bulged. “Where is the Vestige?”

  She cast a glance at Torum, leaning against the bulkhead, his boots crossed at the ankles, face unreadable.

  “H-he’s here, Father.”

  Her father’s brows lowered, and his voice grew even harder. “I will pay to have her brought home.”

  Torum made no move toward the holo. “I can’t exactly fly her to Argentus.”

  Her father’s nose pinched tighter. “Step into the holo. Show your face.”

  Torum sighed and stepped forward, lazy motions, face bored. He moved behind her. His long hands set down beside hers, his broad thumbs barely a millimeter from her pinkie-fingers. He leaned down, so his chest muscles pressed against her shoulders, and his face lowered into the screen of the holo-feed, so close she could feel the magnetic heat of his skin near her cheeks. His chin hovered just above her shoulder.

  Her father’s eyes widened, and a look of sheer hatred passed over his face. “Can you get her to a neutral zone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then do it. Comm when you get there. I’ll have cred in an account waiting for her. We can get her on a transit home where she belongs before she destroys my life’s work.”

  “All my life, I’ve been told that the Argenti valued nothing more than their women.” Torum’s thumb moved out to stroke the side of her pinkie.

  She sucked in a breath, trying to stop her heart from pounding, but every cell came alive at the contact. That one soft touch felt like a gesture of support, it felt like understanding, it felt like sympathy. It touched someplace deep inside her that wanted one person to step up for her care. Worse, she wasn’t even sure he knew he’d done it.

  Her father’s brows drew into a tight line over the bridge of his nose, and he made a sound like he was choking. He had loved someone that much. Her mother.

  “Clearly that was a myth.” Torum stabbed at a button on the console.

  The holograph of her father’s angry red face imploded in a burst of light.

  Torum didn’t move for a long moment. Just stayed there, his face so close to hers that when he breathed, warm air drifted over the tops of her lungs. That thumb kept on stroking along her pinkie, and she stared down at it, watching its languid motion.

  The
n it stopped, and he rose slowly, taking all his warmth with him. “So, your father is the War Chief, and he ended your engagement to continue the war with Vesta?”

  She stared dumbly at her hands, still spread on the black console, her fingers splayed out, her pinkie tingling where his thumb had been. “My father lives for the war. He wants to see every last Vestige dead for what you did to my mother.”

  He was silent for a long moment. “She died in the plague?”

  “Yes. Along with everyone else.”

  “And Agammo’s father wants peace?”

  She lifted a shoulder, her eyes staring through the grates of the floor at the darkened subfloor below, but she didn’t see. “That’s the first I’ve heard of peace.”

  “Same here.”

  Silence fell inside the gentle hum of the bridge, and she was left with a raging war in her mind. She needed to get back to Argentus, but not on her father’s terms.

  Eventually, he pushed away from the console. “He’s a dick. Let’s go.”

  And for some reason, that simple statement was oddly comforting, crude as it was. He’s a dick.

  ONE ADVANTAGE OF TORUM’S crude company was how unconcerned he was with her feelings. Any normal person would have asked if she was okay. But not him. He didn’t give her a second glance after they left the ship behind to slog across the dust.

  And she was grateful to be left alone with her miserable thoughts.

  It was scorching. Blinding. The sun’s glare reflected off the powdery white dust on the planet’s surface. The sky stretched over them, pale and mercilessly empty of clouds.

  They trudged across miles of dust and tiny blue blossoms that lost a bit of their charm under the weight of monotony and blinding heat.

  Even her pearls felt hot, sticking sweatily to her neck.

  She didn’t even bother asking what they were doing because it didn’t matter. At least for now, he seemed disinclined to abandon her here.

  Torum had given her a pair of thick, dark glasses, sun lotion, and a broad-brimmed hat. Even without the dress, she was miserable. She stopped less than a mile in and rolled her stockings down her legs, peeling them off under Torum’s intense glare. She tucked them into a pocket of her dress.

  No matter how hard she tried, her argument with her father crept across her mind, and every time she clamped down on the rising panic. What in the world was she going to do now?

  It wasn’t the first time she wished her mother had survived the Plague of Days, and it wouldn’t be the last. Her mother would have loved her, and she would have helped her now.

  It didn’t matter. She didn’t need her father anyway. He’s a dick. She repeated those words like a mantra. She needed no one but Agammo and the family they’d make together. A family of her own. Full of love and laughter. He’d been the only warm constant in her entire life.

  Torum stopped frequently so they could drink water, handing it to her from the pack on his back. Every time her lips touched the rim, she remembered the feel of his lips against hers the night before, and the touch of his thumb that morning, his breath fluttering over her breasts.

  Something strange happened in her belly every time. Like a hundred butterflies taking wing, fluttering across her insides.

  After what felt like an entire day of drudgery, her feet were sore and raw along the seams of her slippers, and they arrived at a copse of lavender trees, beyond which the glittering thread of a river beckoned.

  Torum didn’t stop until they were well inside the shade.

  She couldn’t keep the breathless awe from her voice as she stared up at the canopy overhead. “It’s beautiful.”

  Purple and gray, shimmering boughs raised skyward and then arched back down again, trailing shining fronds down to the soft, powdery terra.

  Out of the sun, the temperature dropped. She pulled off her hat and glasses.

  He’d pulled off his hat too, but he wasn’t looking around like she was; he was staring at the ground. Something in his posture warned her that they’d arrived at their destination.

  She took a step back, even as her gaze lowered.

  Someone lay in the dust.

  A man.

  A dead man.

  5

  A wallow and a splash

  PART OF TOR had wondered how Klymeni would handle the sight of a dead body.

  She didn’t disappoint. Jasto would have laughed. Her face turned the same pale shade as her dress, and her mouth flopped open like a fish, those gray eyes going wide enough to pop out of her head. Her hand came up to clutch at the pearls around her neck.

  “This is Jasto.” He pointed at the body. “He was killed by Spiro’s brother and his rabid wife. Jasto, meet Klymeni, daughter of a dick.”

  She gawped at him, backing up to the trunk of the tree as if Jasto himself had risen from the dead to stalk her.

  Tor turned away and took a knee beside his friend’s body. He’d never known anyone who laughed as much as Jasto.

  The universe was a lesser place without him.

  Klymeni wrapped her arms around her middle, pressing back against the tree. It was as good a place as any for her to be. Her mouth did that flapping thing again, and she pointed at Jasto. “That’s a body. A-a-a d-dead body.”

  “So it is.”

  Jasto hadn’t fared too poorly, as far as bodies went. The planet’s population of killer birds followed sound patterns, so they hadn’t gotten a hold of him, and while it was hot, it was also arid on this planet. Whatever bacteria existed here on Araa-Ara, it hadn’t eaten away at him. His family would be able to have an open funeral.

  It would mean a lot to them. Jasto hadn’t been a Prime, but he’d taken a humani wife, and they managed to have a child, a rarity in the Vestige world. He had a mother, and siblings, all of whom relied on him.

  All Tor could do was return the body and see that they were set financially.

  He grabbed his bag and pulled out a bottle. “Water?” he offered, just to see what she’d do.

  She gagged, holding the back of her hand against her mouth.

  He slugged water from the bottle and dug around in his pack for the vacubag.

  A man couldn’t work as a bounty hunter, going after scum and lowlifes—hell, working for scum and lowlifes—and not expect death to come calling. It didn’t make it easier, though.

  When he shifted the body onto the vacubag so he could seal Jasto inside, she made a keening noise, and he couldn’t resist.

  “Want to do the honors?” he called over his shoulder. “Close his eyes for me?”

  A faint puff sounded from behind him, but she hadn’t fainted, imploded or melted, so he returned to the task at hand. Closed Jasto’s eyes, sealed him inside the vacubag he’d brought along, and muttered a quick goodbye to both his friend and their old life together.

  When it was done, he crossed to the river to clean his hands.

  He wasn’t hungry, but they should eat. They had a long walk back.

  She was still leaning against the tree when he came back, as far from the body as she could get and still be in the shade.

  “You ready to eat?”

  “Eat? With your—Jasto—just lying there? Dead?”

  “It’s hot.” He dug through his bag for the ration bars.

  “You just put a body in a bag.”

  “Would you have been hungrier if I’d offered you food before I bagged him?”

  She glared at him, and seeing her angry was more fun than seeing the dead look in her eyes after the fight with her father.

  “I can take him back out of the bag if you’d like.”

  Her mouth pursed. “No, thank you. I’m not hungry.”

  “Sit down.” He tossed a bottle of water in her direction. It landed in the dust with a thud. “And drink. We’ve got a long way back. You don’t want to be outside when night falls. If you collapse, I’m not carrying both of you.”

  She took a tiny sip and lowered herself daintily to the ground.

  He pulled ou
t the ration bars he’d packed and bit into one, taking down half in a single bite.

  That elegantly bridged nose wrinkled. Not coming to get the food, then. He tossed the half-eaten bar at her. It bounced off her belly and hit the dirt in front of her. She glowered.

  He tugged his shirt over his head, dropped back in the dust, and polished off a second bar, staring at the canopy overhead.

  Every once in a while, a breeze came along and grabbed hold of the pale, furry tree, and it looked like the whole thing was dancing. It smelled good too. Sweet and girly. A little like her, last night, when she’d turned to fire in his hands.

  There were worse places. He’d been free to do as he pleased for ten years. That had all ended the day his brother had died.

  He lay in the shade, and he thought about Jasto. And Dillan. He thought about his father. He thought about all the people back on Vesta who were counting on him. And he thought about the woman with him—an Argenti woman—the daughter of the War Chief who didn’t want to marry the man he’d chosen. Life was funny.

  Two small and insignificant people stuck together by fate.

  In a universe at war.

  “Why didn’t you take the ship?” Klymeni interrupted his thoughts from her little perch, voice tight. “If you knew you had to retrieve a... body.”

  He let his eyes drift shut while the soft breeze dried his sweaty body. “The escape pod we landed in doesn’t have wheels, and it doesn’t fly. All it does is land. My ship’s not made for cross-terrain jaunts.”

  Plus, a small part of him felt like he owed it to Jasto to suffer. Just a bit. He’d been tied up too long. The exercise wouldn’t kill him.

  She picked up the bottle of water and took a longer pull. The lean muscles of her biceps flexed.

  She was in decent shape. All things considered. She hadn’t complained once about the march in the heat, and though she’d been flushed and breathless, she hadn’t had the labored breathing of the chronically lazy. Whatever she’d done with her life up until now, it must have involved some physical exertion.

  She moved like a dancer, with a solid core.

  Like a dancer in stupid shoes. He’d seen the slight hitch in her step. “Go put your feet in the river.”

  She sent him some side-eye.