Owen (BBW Western Bear Shifter Romance) (Rodeo Bears Book 2) (29 page)

“Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself,” Zosha said in the silky voice designed to get past night guards. She lay back down, dark hair spilling over Rick’s pillow, and blinked innocently up at him. “Now, don’t you have a ship to fly?”

“You know, I was expecting a personality change when the shock wore off,” Rick said in a voice that was probably fonder than he wanted it to be, “but I wasn’t expecting you to turn out to be evil incarnate.”

Zosha scoffed. “Please. I am, at best, severely vexing incarnate. Although that does give me something to aspire to, so thank you. Now,” she continued with a stretch before closing her eyes and waving a hand at Rick lazily, “leave me. I must rest.”

“You do remember the part where I told you I can turn into a bear, right?” Rick asked, heading for the door. “Because that’s still a thing I can do.”
 

“Can’t hear you, sleeping,” Zosha called after him, smile widening as she heard him laugh before the doors closed behind him. She let herself relax completely and waited until sleep claimed her.

And waited. And waited. And waited some more.

After approximately ten minutes of trying and failing, despite her exhaustion, to fall asleep, Zosha gave in and sat up, irritated. Even with the trances, sleep was important. There was only so long she could substitute meditation for the real thing before she started to wear down, and she knew from experience that she was at that point. Every part of her body wanted her to just turn off for a few hours and let herself recuperate from weeks on running, but her brain refused to quiet down. She ambled over the desk, looking for a book or vid collection to distract her until she fell asleep. She found both and, remembering Rick was a single man who often spent long periods alone in this room, opted to go with the books.

She was surprised to see he had actual paper books. While they were common enough ground side, as far as Zosha knew people tended to use digital libraries during long periods of space travel to save room. She picked up a few and flipped through them. They were all action-packed tales of heists and dramatic rescues, which Zosha normally loved; however, it seemed that her mind was too wired to sleep but too unfocused to let her read. She looked over at the intercom and considered seeing if Rick or Annie could get her a sleep aid, then decided they had probably given her enough already. Thirty minutes into her failed attempts to sleep, Zosha gave up. She sighed, then did the only thing she could think of that she actually wanted to do.

Making sure she was zipped up in all the right places, she stepped out into the hallway. Apart from the hum of the ship, it was quiet. She began to make her way to what she assumed was the front of the ship. Luckily, the
Breakwater
was a small enough vessel that the trip was both fast and easy and she made it without running into anyone.

Rick didn’t notice her at first when she entered the cockpit. Moving quietly was second nature to Zosha, even when she didn’t necessarily mean to do it. She considered alerting him to her presence but decided instead to just look at the man for a moment. His skin was tinted in greens and blues from the lights on the control board as he stared intently at the stars rushing by on the view screen. Neither of them moved and Zosha, for the first time in what felt like years, let herself remain motionless, a moment of perfect stillness in a ship going warp 7. Then she moved forward, intentionally stepping down more heavily than normal to let him know she was there. He startled, then swung around to face her.

“Everything okay?” Rick asked. “The intercom not working?”

Suddenly, Zosha felt embarrassed. Why had she thought trailing after him like a puppy was a good idea? She straightened her shoulders. The time honored strategy of “fake it ’til you make it” had worked so far, might as well keep going.

“Couldn’t sleep after all,” she said breezily. “Figured I’d come up and see what an actual cockpit looks like.”

“
Actual
cockpit?” Rick asked, smirking. Zosha relaxed fractionally. “As opposed to what, exactly?”

“Fancy club for people who want to rent a boy for a few hours,” Zosha answered. “Never went myself, but I’ve heard some interesting stories.”
 

“I see,” Rick said. “So, you don’t usually wander around the ships you sneak onto?”

“I’ve never been on a ship long enough to,” she answered, sitting beside the pilot’s seat and looking up at the view screen.
 

“You’ve never… Zosha, is this your first time flying?” Rick asked, incredulous.

“I know, I just seem so worldly,” Zosha said. The streams of light on the screen were having an almost hypnotic effect on her. “It’s just, my entire life I’ve always depended on being able to get out fast and, as I’m sure you know, that doesn’t work as well on a ship. I was always afraid I would end up trapped. And then everything that happened… happened, and it didn’t really matter anymore.” She laughed at Rick’s sideways glance. “I know, I know. The irony is that it trapped me on Lytos. But hey. I’ll take being trapped on an asteroid over a ship any day. At least there’d be decent food.”
 

She leaned over, resting her side against Rick’s chair, her head on his armrest. He stiffened for a moment, then placed his hand about two inches away. She closed her eyes. It hadn’t been a fluke, or the emotional runoff of their mutual storytelling. Something about Rick just made her feel… safe.

“What about you?” she asked, feeling herself relax completely. “How long have you been flying?”

“As a passenger? My whole life, it feels like. I’m a legacy smuggler, I guess. As a pilot, six years.” He looked down at Zosha. “You with me?”

“Mmm, yup,” she said, words sleep-slurred. “Tell me about growing up with smugglers.”

“Wow, you really like getting told stories,” he laughed.

“Or maybe I just like your voice and this is my clever ploy to keep you talking to me,” she said, then yawned.

“I think I could live with that,” Rick said softly. “Alright, so, the
Backbreaker
was about twice as big as the
Breakwater
and dealt almost exclusively in the Outer Rim. I don’t think I saw a core planet until I was ten, and my mom ended up accidentally kidnapping a shop girl. See, she’d gone in to look for spare parts…”

The combination of the stars rushing past them and Rick’s voice did what reading and breathing exercises hadn’t managed, and Zosha felt herself drifting off. At some point and indeterminable amount of time later, she felt a soft, warm pressure on the top of her head. When she didn’t move away, the pressure began to move down the length of her hair, lightly at first and then with more confidence.
 
Zosha sighed happily and let the feeling of Rick running his fingers through her hair push her that final step into sleep.

She was, distantly, aware of fading in and out of consciousness, bursts of awareness of the glow of the screen and the sounds of the ship and, always, of the feeling of Rick’s hand in her hair.

“You’re gonna wind up outside my door begging to keep her, aren’t you?” she thought she heard someone say at one point.

“She’s not a dog, Leo,” Rick answered.

“Says the one petting her,” the captain snorted. “Anyways, you’re in luck. Annie likes her and, more importantly, Annie thinks she might be useful.”

“Useful
how
?” Rick asked, his voice suddenly something hard and sharp.

“Ease up. It doesn’t involve giving her to Lan Doro. Annie’s working on convincing the others to see it her way. If she’s successful, which looking back on her track record I’m inclined to think she will be, there’ll be another meeting. Consider this a heads up.”

“And whatever Annie’s thinking won’t put her in danger?”

“No more than she already is. Actually, Annie’s hoping we can solve one of our problems by solving hers. Why, were you planning on finally going on that killing spree if I said yes? Because as someone who’s been your friend for five years and your captain for six, I’m going to feel pretty offended if you throw me over for someone you’ve known for a handful of hours.”

“Don’t be stupid, of course not. But I do think she’s worth protecting.”

“I know the feeling. I’ll call you when Annie manages to glare Hyde and Dominic into submission.”

“She’s not worried about Custer?”

“Since when has anyone ever cared about Custer’s opinion on anything? Besides, he likes her.”

Rick sighed. “I was afraid that would happen.”

The captain chuckled. “Don’t worry, he’s not edging in on your territory. Anyways, I need to go make sure Dom and Hyde haven’t gotten offensive enough that Annie’ll be forced to retaliate. Try not to crash.”

“Fuck off.”

Zosha was aware on some level that she had just heard something important, but she wasn’t aware enough to figure out why it was important or why she should care. Instead she slipped back under.

The next time she woke up it was because Rick was shaking her. She blinked up at him.

“Wusshappenin?” she asked.

“Congratulations, that was almost a real word. I need you to get up now. Annie has a plan.”

Zosha tried and failed to will her legs to work, then looked plaintively up at Rick. He sighed, a warm look in his eyes, and hauled her to her feet.

“How did you manage to escape from a villainous mastermind on your own, exactly?” He asked as she leaned into him, stretching out a few aches and adjusting to being on her feet.

“I wasn’t alone. And Lan Doro isn’t a mastermind. And I am stealthy and amazing,” she told him, forming her words precisely as the fog of sleep slowly cleared out of her mind.

“I mean I’d go with ‘you’re lucky that you’re pretty,’ but sure let’s go with that,” Rick answered. Zosha cycled through reactions to that, from offended to teasing to nonchalant, before focusing on the important bit.

“You think I’m pretty?” she asked with a sleep-drunk smile, batting her eyelashes at him.

“Haven’t kicked you out of bed yet, have I? Or the cockpit, for that matter.”

“’Cause you know I’d kick you
in
the cockpit if you tried.”

“Almost flawless comeback, that. Points off for there not actually being a pit near my cock.”

“There will be if you try anything, just ask Custer,” Zosha said.

Rick laughed and began pulling her towards the kitchen. “Alright, then, I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”

“Nope, too late, you already told me about the Great Brothel Escape,” she told him.

“And there goes the sterling reputation I’ve spent years polishing,” he said. Suddenly, his face fell. “Zosha, I just want you to know that everything is going to be okay.”

It seemed like a silly thing to say out of the blue, and Zosha was confused until the conversation she’d thought she dreamed came back in fragments. She was suddenly much more awake.

“Oh, God, they’ve decided what to do with me,” she said.

“Yes, they have,” Rick said soothingly. “And they’re going to help you. I need you to trust me. Can you do that, just for ten minutes?”

Looking in those warm, golden eyes, Zosha thought she could trust him for a lot longer than ten minutes. She nodded and followed him the rest of the way to the kitchen.

The others were already sitting around the table when Zosha and Rick arrived, a sense of déjà vu sweeping over her. There were two chairs open across from where the captain was sitting, Annie leaning on his back with her arms around his shoulders, and Rick sat down comfortably, Zosha following suit after a second of hesitation.
 

“Alright, so,” Captain Ingram began, “the brilliant love of my life has had an idea. I, personally, think it’s a damn good one, and these chucklefucks,” he gestured at Dominic, Hyde, and Custer, “apparently agree enough that they’re willing to consider it.
If
you think you can do your part.”

The captain looked up and locked eyes with Annie, who nodded. She straightened up, leaning an elbow on Ingram’s shoulder, and addressed the room.

“So, it seems to me what we have here is a thief with a ledger and an asteroid locked in a civil war,” she said. “And, of course, what we’ve always had: our job. It seems to me there’s a way to combine those.

“Stop me, Zosha, if I get any of this wrong. After Strathmore’s long overdue demise, the Rahm brothers split and began fighting each other for control of Lytos. You had the misfortune of pickpocketing the wrong man. Lan Doro, something of a supplier to the younger Rahm, had a notebook detailing the U4 trade he was running. This notebook is now in your possession. Yes? Good. Now, I know all of you know what U4 is and exactly how much you can make smuggling it because we’ve been on the lookout for an opportunity to get in on the game. And this,” Annie said, pointing at Zosha, “is that opportunity.”

“How so?” asked Hyde.
 

“We know what all three parties involved in this want. Zosha wants to get rid of the notebook and make it out of this safely. We want in on the U4 trade. And the older Rahm wants his brother out of the way.”

“Wait,” Zosha interrupted. “When did Sylas Rahm get involved?”

“We’re involving him,” Annie said, the steel back in her eyes, “because it’s the best way to tie up several loose ends. If we destroy or otherwise wash our hands of the notebook, Lan Doro still wants Zosha dead because he can’t let her live after reading it or give her the chance to tell his boss that he let it be stolen. If we take it to the younger Rahm brother, then we have to go into Lan Doro’s territory and we run the risk of him getting to Zosha before we reach our goal. And little brother already has a supplier.