other motivation for forcing Nokx to cohabitate with the Earther seemed possible, although Nokx couldn’t decide what it was for the life of him. It wasn’t like he was a troublemaker on the Sraibur, not like Izyk, so giving him a female to help Nokx settle down didn’t make sense.
Not that Faros had ever been a matchmaker.
He rubbed the back of his head and frowned. Faros and Wyzak had calmed somewhat when their females agreed to stay with them, though they’d both been impossible to deal with before the Earthers gave in. His eyes narrowed. Perhaps it was less about him and more about EJ. Could the captain want her to stay on the Sraibur, and assumed that giving her to one of the crew would be an efficient way of achieving it? Nokx rolled his eyes. Faros most likely just wanted to fuck with him, perhaps give him a chance to mate with the bright-eyed Earther.
He smiled faintly and shook his head. The little marmox. She’d sassed him in the corridor and did a reasonable imitation of an angry Xaravian, though her stature was insufficient to really make the comparison. Which just made it even funnier. He stretched his shoulders and adjusted how he sat on the couch. It had been a long day, and a long week before. The farther out into ungoverned space they went, the more on alert the whole crew had to be. Faros had a destination, or at least claimed he did, but enemies stalked the entire route.
Nokx closed his eyes. He could rest for just a moment before the Earther reappeared. The thought of her smelling of his soap and her natural scent, curled up in his room... He groaned and shifted again, adjusting himself, and tried not to think about how long it had been since he’d had a female. The last one had not been nearly so appealing as EJ, and had sparked none of the protective instincts that the Earther fired up with just a quaver in her voice.
But she’d worked for the Fleet, and the Information Ministry—the very worst of the worst. There was always the chance that she’d never left the Ministry and instead they sent her out to eventually cross paths with rebels and pirates. The devious bastards had done that sort of thing before; there was no telling how many sandsnakes they’d scattered across ungoverned space.
Nokx clenched his jaw. EJ didn’t strike him as capable of that kind of subterfuge. Her reactions to the past had been genuine; she’d trembled in his arms and hidden her face as she recounted the story of how she deserted. There was no way she’d faked it. The Information Ministry could be using her for its own ends, but he was damn certain EJ didn’t know about it.
He’d been in a few scrapes with the Fleet and a few Information Ministry zealots as a pirate, and as the captain of his own ship before he joined the Sraibur. The Fleet was why he’d lost his ship, lost his crew, nearly lost his mind and his life. Nokx forced his hands to relax out of the fists he’d made. It was behind him. He’d survived, even though some of his crew had not. Nokx moved on. The fight no longer stormed around him.
But when he dropped into sleep, the battle screamed back into reality around him. Nokx piloted his ship through a roving pack of Fleet cutters, trying to save his fellow Xaravians, and confronted the battleship to draw it away. His shields failed as an Information Ministry weapon detonated in the middle of the battle and knocked out their power supply. He growled and tensed, smelling smoke and feeling his eyes prickle as sparks and chemicals filled the slowly-failing air inside the ship. A metal arm from the battleship seized his ship, dragging them to jail and execution after months of torture at the hands of the sadistic bastards.
Something whispered through the air in front of him and Nokx exploded into motion. He wasn’t going down without a fight, he wouldn’t let those Fleet assholes take him alive, he wouldn’t...
A squeak and soft skin in his hands forced his eyes open, and Nokx stared at the Earther he held. His mind refused to process the change, from a ship in battle to the quiet, dim interior of a room with a sweet-smelling female in front of him. He growled more and she blinked wide green eyes, wetting her lips as