Authors: Corinne Davies
“Oh god, it feels so good.” Kassandra stretched her body out. Julien eased his cock from her body and flopped down next to her. He loved the way she’d stretch and then want to snuggle with him after sex. The truth was he missed the feeling of her body against his almost more than when he was inside her.
“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself.” He ran his fingers over her breast, circling her nipple.
“I haven’t had a good fuck in years.” She patted him on the hip, sat up, and started pulling on her underclothes.
Julien lay there in shock, watching her lift her leather vest from the chair where he’d tossed it. “What are you doing?”
Kassandra turned and looked over her shoulder at him. “Getting dressed of course, are you finished with the charade of our reconciliation? If all you wanted to do was fuck, you could’ve sent a message and we could’ve avoided all this nonsense.” She picked up her silk shirt, and he heard her sigh. “Do you know how much this cost me? Damn, you ruined every button on it.”
Julien felt his temper skyrocket with every asinine word that came out of her mouth. He jerked on his pants and grabbed his shirt. “I don’t remember you ever complaining before about ripped clothes.”
She shrugged an elegant shoulder as she sauntered over to the wall and opened a drawer. “If my clothes got ripped every time I fucked someone, I’d be running around naked within the week.” She didn’t bother turning around when she spoke as she rummaged through her clothes.
Julien’s hand shook as he pulled on his boots. He wasn’t certain if it was a white-hot rage that infused him or a pain so agonizing it short-circuited his emotions. “We’ll be docking with
Atlantis
in a couple hours.”
He carried his shirt and coat and marched out of her room without a backward glance. As soon as the door closed behind him, he turned off the opening device, locking her in there until he decided she could emerge.
Thankfully Raz and Gabe kept their mouths shut when he entered the deck half-dressed and flopped down in the captain’s seat. Kassandra’s scent filled his head, and his traitorous cock twitched at the reminder of her body. She might have won this round, but he would win the war.
* * * *
Kassandra sank to the floor the moment she heard the door close and lock behind him. Her legs quivered and her hand shook so badly she could hardly wipe the tears from her face. She felt sick at her own behavior. Acting so completely indifferent would infuriate Julien. He’d get rid of her now. There was no way he’d accept her back into his life after she’d insinuated what she did. It would be so easy to fall in love with him again, not that she ever stopped loving him. But sooner or later she feared he would use his whip on her, and she couldn’t take the chance.
She remembered every sound the poor man had made as he’d begged for mercy. The ragged cries for his Master…bile surged up into the back of her throat at the memory. She hated that word. A word she’d been forced to use over and over as she begged the slavers to take her home. She’d been bought and paid for according to them. They didn’t care she’d been abducted from her home in a midnight raid and then sold to them. She and the others they bartered for were no better than cattle and had been treated as such.
It took her a few minutes to get up off the floor and stagger over to the small washing room attached to her bedroom. She turned on the taps and did her best to wash up and use the facilities before staggering to her bed. She crawled under the covers, pulled them over her head, and curled up in a little ball. She’d lived the past two years on her own terms, free to go where she wanted when she wanted and help save those who didn’t have anyone to help them. No one would take that away from her, no matter how hard they tried. She would play the part as she had for years and cry for the hurt she caused him when no one else was around.
As soon as they docked at
Atlantis
, she would gather her crew. As she’d told Julien earlier, she’d be gone by the end of the week, and this time, she’d make certain he couldn’t find her. Kassandra loved her ship. It’d been her symbol of freedom and her home since the day she’d boarded her. The present circumstance annoyed her to no end.
When Julien came back to the room, she was refreshed, dressed, and ready to take on the world. He’d underestimated her again if he thought that simply disengaging the door would keep her locked in her room. This was her home and she knew every hidey-hole and trick to get around it.
“Kassandra, why don’t you take the controls for now?” Julien strode past her chair and sat down in the one next to it. For a moment she wondered why he would give her the power to change their course.
The sensors flashed that they’d reached
Atlantis,
but all she could see was the blue expanse of the ocean beneath them. She wasn’t surprised when he stepped back and allowed her to sit in the captain’s chair to dock with
Atlantis
. The procedure was tricky if a person wasn’t used to handling the ship, and she was the best option at the moment.
“How long till
Atlantis
surfaces?” Gabe asked as he looked out the main window to the water below. The setting sun glinted off the water’s surface like flakes of gold. Kass turned her attention to her navigational chart, affirming what she already knew.
Atlantis
was just below them.
“She won’t,” Julien replied. Kassandra glanced over at him and he winked at her as he eased the shoulder straps on his chair over his shoulders.
“How the hell will we board her then?” Gabe looked at Julien as if he was insane. “I’m a great swimmer, but even I couldn’t survive diving that deep in the freezing ocean.”
“Like this.” Kass banked the ship and turned her into a steep dive toward the water. She’d lost count how many times she’d lost a New World pursuer or the odd two-faced pirate by using this exact movement. “Brace yourselves.”
“You two are insane!” Raz scrambled to a chair and buckled himself in as Gabe moved to the one next to him.
The water raced toward the ship, and Kass felt an exhilarated sense of power when the
Aphrodite
sliced through the surface with a roar. The hydro turbines kicked in with a deep hum, and after hanging suspended for a minute the ship propelled forward.
“Okay, I take it back. That was fun. Can we do it again?” Gabe turned a wicked smile in her direction and winked. Raz’s face mirrored his brother’s, creating a devastating effect. She could only imagine the number of hearts that had been laid to waste by those two. She glanced over at Julien to see if he found their reaction equally amusing, but he sat there glaring at both of them.
I don’t understand men.
Kass flicked the switches that exposed the lighting portals on the outside of the ship, distracting the male attention back outside. Iridescent lights flickered on, illuminating the waters in front of them. The deeper they dove, the darker the water around them became and the brighter the outer lights shone, and she started to make out
Atlantis
’s enormous shadow.
Schools of fish parted as they moved through the water. A curious shark edged closer and then darted out of the way as they passed. Kass flipped up the docking levers and turned off the drive pumps. It’d been over two years since she’d done this and she hoped it was a skill she hadn’t lost.
“If I time this right…” With one hand on the wheel and the other on a release valve she pulsed air out of one of the ballasts, cutting them through the water toward the docking arm. There was a low grinding noise and then the
thunk
and
clap
of the docking levers catching. She turned and winced at Julien. “Sorry about that.”
Julien shook his head. “As long as you didn’t puncture a hole in the side of my home, I’m sure whatever damage you did can be fixed the next time we surface.”
Kassandra wasn’t worried about
Atlantis
. Those docking arms had multiple layers designed specifically to withstand the abuse of a sloppy landing. They all unbuckled the restraints that held them in their chairs and stood up. Julien waved a hand forward for her to precede him out into the hallway. She lifted an eyebrow but walked past and completely ignored the goose bumps that rose along her arm as she brushed past him.
By the time she reached the lower deck, a heavy knock echoed from a hatch in the floor. She moved to unlock the hinges but Gabe beat her to it. “Let me get that for you.”
She appreciated the gesture considering the hatch hadn’t been used in over two years and no doubt would be difficult to open. Raz knelt down across from his brother and the two of them made quick work of the stubborn hinges. The release wheel squealed as it resisted being opened.
“Kass, could you stand back a bit before we open the hatch?” Gabe asked. Raz stopped turning the wheel and waited.
“Whatever for?”
“Because if
Atlantis
has been infiltrated during my absence, they don’t want you in the line of fire if that isn’t one of my men on the other side.” Julien wrapped his arm around her and tugged her back behind him. He palmed his gun and rested his finger on the trigger. For the sake of argument, Kass allowed him to pretend to protect her. Not about to stand around like a victim, she extricated her own weapons from under her coat and eased off the safety mechanisms. She quietly stepped back and to the side of Julien so she had an unblocked line of fire as well.
Raz grinned as he resumed turning the stubborn wheel. She assumed he saw her but thankfully didn’t draw attention to her actions. The hatch dropped open and the four of them lifted their weapons.
A uniformed man stuck his head up through the opening. “Welcome home, Captain Kincaid.”
As soon as Kass saw Julien’s second-in-command, she tucked her pistol back into the holster she’d strapped under her coat. The man turned his head and looked at her, a large smile breaking out over his face. “Kassie, lass. What a thrill it is to see you again!”
“Hello, Mac. It’s lovely to see you, too. I’ve missed you.”
John McIntosh was a bear of a man, second-in-command of
Atlantis
, and someone who’d always treated Kass like a daughter, despite their closeness in age. He’d seen so much in his years that he always seemed wise beyond his age. “You get in here and give me a proper hug.”
Julien scowled at her. “You pointed a gun in my face, but he gets a hug hello?”
“He knocked first. He didn’t steal my ship from underneath me.” Kass stepped past him and carefully climbed down the ladder in the metal tube that now connected her ship to
Atlantis
.
As soon as her feet touched the floor, she was swept up into a big hug. “I’m so relieved you’re safe. You’ve put on some weight since I last saw you. It looks good, and you’re softer.”
Kass laughed and hugged him back as exuberantly as he hugged her. When she’d left
Atlantis
, she’d left behind a crew of people who she’d begun to think of as family. “Is my crew okay, John?”
He put her down on her feet and frowned, tapping her nose with his finger. “I’m not going to take offense at that question, even though I should. Your crew landed here a couple hours ago. They’re fine and are staying below decks with
Atlantis’s
crew.”
“Thank you.” She did feel some guilt for asking, but her first concern was her crew’s safety. The image of Julien with a whip in his hand crossed her mind again.
“Did you tell her that her crew is tied up and we mean to feed them to the sharks once we’ve finished extracting all the information we can out of them?” Julien wrapped his hand around Kass’s upper arm and pulled her closer to him.
John grinned at them both and turned his attention to Raz and Gabe. “Thank you for bringing him back in one piece. I know it’s not an easy feat.”
“I wasn’t worried about him until we met Kassandra,” Raz whispered in a loud voice.
“Then we feared for his life,” Gabe added.
The four of them broke into laughter. Julien stood there and rolled his eyes. “It’s a wonder that I keep you in my employ with the lack of respect you routinely show me.”
“Sorry, sir,” Gabe and Raz said in unison, but the looks on their faces spoke anything but remorse.