Joanna Wylde - Jerred's Price

She turned and stalked out of galley with a dignity so frail it pained him to watch her.

Giselle sat on her bunk, legs curled up to her chest, hugging herself. Damn him, why did he have to make her think of Hector Prime? She’d put it out of her head for months, almost a year. Why did he have to bring it all back?

She knew in her heart that whatever his flaws, he probably wasn’t personally responsible for the Saurellians’ decision to breach Hector Prime’s neutrality. But that didn’t make it any easier to deal with the memory of her lost friends and dreams.

Men and their wars. They were to blame for all of this, and he was one of them. His scar hadn’t come from natural causes; that was no birthmark. He’d gotten it fighting, and even if he’d never set foot on Hector Prime, he’d caused destruction somewhere else.

It was always the women and the children who paid for men’s wars.

She sat and sniffled for a while, allowing herself to wallow and feel sorry for herself. It wasn’t like she did it that often. When she’d lost her home and her business, she’d immediately gone out and gotten a job. And when a better opportunity came along to go to Transit Three, she’d taken that. She knew how to work, how to take care of herself. She’d done it before and she’d do it again. But just once, it would be nice to lay back and mourn all she’d lost.

Even now he was probably watching her. Even though the light was off, it was a good bet that there were infrared lenses on the spy cameras he had everywhere.

Defiantly, she raised one finger in a universally hostile gesture and waved it up at him, letting him know just what she thought of him and his fellow Saurellians.

All too soon, her pragmatic nature took over. She was trapped on this ship with him, and if she wanted to get away she would need to establish some kind of bond with the bastard. She’d already agreed to have sex with him. Hell, it wasn’t as if he didn’t attract her, at least on a physical level. Slowly, she stood and turned on the light. There was a small mirror on the back of the door; it reflected a face red and puffy with tears.

She scowled at her reflection, disgusted with her coloring. Why did she always have to look blotchy when she cried? It wasn’t fair.

Of course, better blotchy than dead, she reminded herself. It was more than her friends on Hector Prime had going for them, and more than she would have had if she hadn’t escaped Transit Three. No matter how mean Jerred might be, she didn’t doubt for one moment that the station guards would have been meaner.

She opened the door, intent on going to the fresher to wash her face. He was there, sitting on the floor in the corridor looking up at her. His face was cool and hard, no trace of emotion in sight, but he stood quickly and reached for her. She shot him a look of pure ice, and he pulled his hands back, and tucking them behind his back.

“Are you all right?” he asked stiffly. “I regret the harm my people did to you and your friends. I wanted to give you a nice dinner, to try and make some sort of peace with you. I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”

“It’s all right,” she said, feeling tired. “You didn’t know. Can you please answer one question for me, though? Were you on Hector Prime? Were you one of them?”

He shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I had nothing to do with it, although that hardly makes a difference at this point. They’re still dead.”

“A lot of people are dead,” she replied, sighing heavily. “I guess we need to blame the Emperor and the Saurellian Council for that. You aren’t on the Council, are you?”

she asked suspiciously.

“No, I have nothing to do with them,” he replied, startled. That emotionless mask slipped for a moment, and she had a burst of insight. He used that combination of emotional blankness and his scarring to hide himself from everyone around him. How interesting… And effective. She never would have guessed there was a man capable of compassion within him, but there was no faking his concern. He cared that he had hurt her.

“Would you like to finish dinner?” she asked softly. “If the Saurellians and the Imperials can manage to hold a truce, shouldn’t we be able to?”

“Yes, I think so,” he said. “May I escort you to the galley?”

He held out one arm gallantly, as if they were in a vid about the Imperial Court. She reached out and took it. When he seated her this time, the mushroom dish was gone.

The wine was still there, however, and within moments he placed a plate of something covered in a thin, speckled glaze.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It’s kvana , in a Beloni pepper glaze,” he said slowly. “It’s kind of my specialty. At least, when I can get the kvana. ”

She shook her head, wondering how he’d gotten kvana . Then she took a bite. The meat was tender, flavorful without being too strong—perfectly balanced by the sweet glaze. After a moment her tongue began to burn, and she took a sip of the wine to cool it off. The strange shiver of sensation it caused wasn’t unexpected this time, but it was still startling. The stuff seemed to go straight down between her legs. She looked at him speculatively, wondering if it was doing the same thing to him.

He really was quite an attractive man.

They ate dinner slowly, keeping their conversation light. When they were done with the kvana, he brought her a small cup of flavored ice, to “cleanse her palate.” She was on her third glass of wine by that time, and feeling more than a little silly when he followed the ices with a platter of greens, cheeses and fruits, many of which she had never seen before.

He also opened a new bottle of wine, this one much lighter and fruitier.

“So, where did you learn to cook like this?’ she asked as they moved slowly out of the galley into the living area. At some point he had turned the garden program on in there, too, because they were still surrounded by the soothingly natural sights and sounds. Now, though, the lights had dimmed, as if to simulate evening.

“I learned to cook from my parents’ cook,” he said as they sat down on the low couch. “She was an amazing woman, a refugee from the Imperial Court. She loved exotic foods.”

“Where did you grow up that you could get stuff like this?” she asked. “I thought Saurellia was pretty out of the way, kinda primitive.”

He burst out laughing. She leaned her head against his shoulder, and his arm wrapped around her. She snuggled into his warmth. It was amazing how nice he could be when he wasn’t actually going out of his way to be an ass, she thought drowsily.

“We are a bit isolated,” he said finally. “But I hardly think that we’re backward.

Saurellian customs and lifestyles tend to be simpler than Imperial customs, but that’s not a bad thing. For example, we don’t have to keep billions of slaves to support us. I may be crazy, but I find that to be rather civilized of us.”

“Well, you’ve got a point there,” she said softly. “Although I’ve never lived anywhere that had many slaves.”

“Really?” he asked. “What about Transit Three? Did you know that nearly 30

percent of the population there is slave?”

“What?” she asked, startled. “Where are they all?”

“Most of them live on the lower levels,” he said softly. “They’re the ones who provide the ‘transit’ of cargoes. Just out of curiosity, do you know what you friend Vetch does for a living?”

She sat up and looked at him.

“He runs cargo,” she said.

“What kind of cargo?”

“All kinds,” she replied, confused. “It just depends on where the money is.”