Page 55 of Tempting Cargo
“Paiata, you’re embarrassing the human.” Shohari grabbed my thigh possessively. “Human cocks are bigger though,” she said, a touch smug.“And I really like him. Did you know that?”
I allowed myself a small smile. She may have been drunk, but as it loosened her tongue, I let myself believe it was all rooted in truth.
“We see that, Captain.”
“And maybe I’m not going to mate skykking Rokharu when my parents say I will. Maybe I’ll skyk who I skykking like.”
Her words filtered through my brain, and my blood ran cold. I prised her hand off my leg.
“Shohari,” I said, drawing out each syllable, “are you engaged to someone else?”
Was I going to have an angry kri’ith come after me for fucking his would-be wife? Her parents sounded stuffy enough to be from a culture that still believed in—and prized—virginity, for goodness’ sake.Had I walked dick first into an alien period drama?
Colour drained from her face, leaving it a pale lavender, and her spines flattened. “Skyk no.”
“Cap, you’ll have to serve the chrya now. Don’t worry the poor lad.”
Shohari hauled a hand through her headspines. “I don’t want to say it all over again. Can you tell him? If I do it, I’ll rant so much I’ll rouse the whole cantina to storm my parents’ house.” She slumped, nursing her drink, then sat straighter. “Oh. Can we raise a small army?How many people can we fit in the cargo bay?”
“Fine, I’ll tell him. You’re sounding unsettlingly like Muzati,” Paiata said.
“Hey! I resent that.” Muzati cuffed him round the head. “It’s a fantastic idea. We—”
Paiata thrust his hands over both their mouths. “Garrison, the captain comes from a traditional family. The people on our original homeworld, Orith, don’t like other species. They don’t like modern traditions.” The normally taciturn pilot grimaced, and he spat his next words. “Children are essentially treated like property. Shohari has to make money for them via trading, and if she doesn’t, she’ll be mated off to another family.”
Damn. Shohari’s parentsdidlive in the alien Victorian era, and I’d been cast as the underdog in their futuristic-historical drama.
My mouth took off before I could rein it in. “That’s awful, but— Sorry if I’m missing a really fucking obvious bit here. Why can’t she just say no and leave? We’re out here.” I waved my hand vaguely about the place, then back at my companions.
Paiata’s face wore its usual stoic expression, but the agony in Shohari’s eyes, as if she was ready to cry or scream, hit me like a mining truck.
My blood surged, fists clenching, eyes darting round the room for a threat I knew wasn’t there. “You can’t, can you?” I knew the answer before I even finished asking, and softened my voice. “Why not?”
She hung her head. A smothering silence descended on the booth. “My brother. They’ll hurt my brother.”
What thefuck?
Breathe in. Breathe out.
“My brother, Airida. He was born with a genetic condition. I don’t see anything wrong with him. He just looks different, but my parents are ashamed of him, call him deformed.” Her voice shifted into a monotone. “His condition needs ongoing, expensive medical care. If I don’t trade via the family ship, if I don’t send credits back home, they’ll send him off to a colony.”
I forced back the waves of horror and anger that threatened to spill over. Shohari’s headspines hung flat and limp, falling in a curtain across her face. She looked so broken, so helpless, and it ached that I couldn’t make things right for her. “Fuck. Sho, that’s horrendous.”
I flung a wild glance round the cantina. Amongst all these unfamiliar beings,Iwas the only alien, wasn’t I? I didn’t belong here. This wasn’t my world. I didn’t understand anything about these people, their cultures, did I? Any of them?
She lifted her head enough to look at me. “Yes, it is. But that’s why I can’t have my own life.”
I took her into my arms, holding her stiff body close, pouring all the love and care I possessed into that embrace as if it could make up for the years she’d been without.
Because she’d gone without care for so long, hadn’t she? Who was really there for Shohari? Her crew were decent, but shewas the captain. Who looked afterher? Comforted her? Who did she share her hopes, her fears, her frustrations with?
Dammit, I wanted it to be me.
Her situation should have made it easier for me to walk away in two days. Star-crossed lovers. Never meant to be. But how the fuck could I walk away when we should be fucking flying there to confront them, to take her brother far away, where her parents couldn’t hurt either of them?
If that were possible, she’d have done it already.
“I hate them, Garrison. I hate them so much.”She pushed out of my embrace. “One day, I’m going to kill them.” Her eyes were clear and bright, glittering with violet fury under the cantina lights. She spoke with such venomous clarity, I had no doubt she meant it.
