Barbarian Pirate. Cecily Royce

she found a way off this ship.

      "Tell me you thought I'd choose to die," she said after taking a deep breath, bringing her gaze back to Rego's. "Go ahead and claim I really had a choice."

      "Of course you had a choice," he countered as he stood up and moved out from behind his desk, his full attention still on her. "Some women would have chosen to die rather than be despoiled, which would have been nothing more than a foolish waste. This is my office, and my cabin is next door through this hatch. Let's get you started on the first of your duties."

      Pressing a switch on the wall next to the hatch made it slide open, and Rego gestured her through the doorway first. Now that the man was standing rather than sitting, Chayara was even more unhappy. He was big in his black pants and boots and turquoise long-sleeved shirt, both taller and wider than the man called Khar, giving her the impression that he could crush her with one hand. Chayara didn't like to be made to feel tiny, most especially since she wasn't, but there wasn't much she could do to change things. Even if she found it possible to knock Rego down, say, the effort wasn't likely to do her any good.

      "As you can now see, this cabin could use some tidying," he said from behind her—an understatement if Chayara had ever heard one. The place was a mess, not to mention bigger than any other cabin she had ever seen. Clothes were thrown every which way, the linen on the bed bolted into the deck looked like it hadn't been changed in years, and books were stacked everywhere, including on some of the piles of clothing. A disposal bag lay on the floor not far from the bed, but someone had only just started to fill it with the remnants of a dozen unfinished meals in their disposable dishes. The only thing the cabin lacked was piles of animal droppings.

      "I expect to be pleasantly surprised when I come back here later," Rego said, the sound of his voice proving he hadn't done more than step through the hatch. "Ship time is mid-afternoon, so that should give you some idea of when I'll be back. The clothes cleaner is in that corner to the right, near the door to the head, and the head itself could use some tidying up. Don't try to leave this cabin under any circumstance, not even to come into my office. If you're ever found anywhere but here without my permission, I won't wait to hear any reasons. I'll just assume that you've changed your mind about your choice and act accordingly. Do you understand me?"

      "Sure, boss, anything you say," Chayara responded without turning, fighting to keep from grinding her teeth as she stepped over a mound of dirty clothes. If she couldn't get him to change his mind about confining her to the cabin, she might as well just walk out. Becoming a prisoner with no chance of escape would end her efforts as completely as being arrested by the Patrol, and she didn't have all the time in the universe. Any delay in reaching her uncle could cause her to run out of time altogether, and that would mean the end of everything. And, come to think of it, she would have to find out where this pirate ship was heading.

      Chayara turned to the hatch to see if Rego had any more orders he wanted to give her, and was startled to see he had disappeared. The fact that the hatch was closed again told her where he'd gone, which meant she could slump for a minute and rub her face with both hands. Not showing a predator fear was hard work, but harder was keeping an awareness of that fear from yourself. But it all still had to be done, just the way digging through that mess all around her had to be done. For a little while, at least.

      Torand Rego went back to his desk and sat down, looking at the few items the girl's pack had contained while he tried to figure out why he'd done what he had. The blonde and blue-eyed girl his men had found was pretty enough, despite her wrinkled gray shirt and pants and lack of makeup, but at another time he would have simply had her knocked out and put off at the first station the Hawk could reach. By the time she woke up he and his people would be long gone, and the authorities might never have found out what ship it was that had brought her.

      But instead of doing the smart thing, he'd told her who he was, and then he'd forced her into the only decision she could have made. Granted, he'd been feeling a bit surly of late and her unimpressed attitude had annoyed him, not to mention the fact that it was perfectly obvious she'd been traveling for longer than a couple of days. She was either running away from something or running to something, and when she'd refused to tell him which, his annoyance had flared up like a nova.

      Tor got up from his chair again and went to pour himself another cup of coffee, impatience flooding him just the way it had been doing for weeks now. He and his crew were awaiting word that the leader's major plan was ready to be put into effect, but so far close was as good as it got. The Great Plan, they'd taken to calling it, trying to make a joke out of something that meant so much to all of them. A couple of members of Tor's crew might not be eager to leave the life of a pirate, but he and everyone else wanted nothing more than to go home and find some kind of normal life to lead.

      "Assuming there is such a thing as a normal life," he muttered as he added cream and sugar to his coffee. "But what I consider normal, not the twisted definition used by our glorious central government. If we can't get rid of those people, we'll be hunted outlaws for the rest of our lives, just the way we are right now."

      And maybe that was the reason he'd appropriated the girl, he thought as he carried the cup back to his desk. Once their private war was over, he'd be able to have a woman of his own, but victory was taking too long in coming. He wanted some of the fruits of victory now, and taking one of their women suited his mood perfectly. She had gone pale when he'd told her who he was, and the fact that she hadn't fainted was something of a surprise. Tor smiled. Later he'd have to see what he could do to change that state of affairs.

      Chayara stood in the middle of the cabin and looked around to see that she'd accomplished more than she'd thought. The bed linen and blankets had been the first things to go through the cleaner, and then she'd remade the bed while the first load of dirty clothes was being done. After that she'd used the bed to dump the clean clothes to make room for more in the cleaner, and then folded the clean stuff before tackling the garbage. One of the cabin walls had drawers all across and half way up it; drawers with catches to keep them from flying open if something happened to the ship's artificial gravity. The clean clothes were going into those drawers as soon as they were folded, and the disposal bag was almost full to the top with litter.

      "And now it's even possible to see that there's carpeting in here," she muttered, but the observation did very little to distract her from the fact that Torand Rego would soon be back. She'd worked at top speed to keep herself occupied, but the later it got, the more her thoughts kept returning to the fact that he meant to use her body. She'd hated having to clean up his mess, but what he meant to do later was beginning to make her more than a little afraid.

      "But it's also making me mad, and mad is better than afraid any day of the week," she stated, straightening where she stood. "He has no right to force me into his bed, so he also has no right to complain if things don't go as well as he expects them to. And they won't go well, I can see to that, at least."

      And her decision was made just in time. The sound of the hatch sliding back made her turn, and there was Rego himself, stepping into the cabin.

      "Well, I'm impressed," he said, pressing the switch to close the hatch again before coming more fully into the cabin. "You've actually made this place livable again, so you've earned a reward. Drink this, and then you'll have your reward."

      "What is it?" Chayara asked, eyeing the small glass filled with about half an inch of liquid without making any attempt to take it. "That's green, and I don't drink things that are green." It looked odd and she didn't dare smell it.

      "This is medication that will kill any odd germs you may have brought aboard," Rego said, a distant amusement in those cold gray eyes. "The men who found you and I have already had our doses, and now it's your turn. If you hate the taste as much as we did, that's only fair. If you don't drink it, you can't stay aboard."

      And since they weren't near a station, that meant being put out of an airlock. Chayara was beginning to hate that threat, even beyond the idea of dying. She wanted to tell Rego to kill her and be damned, but that