“I’m sorry, sir, but I’m not allowed to let you in.”

Orion scowled at the green-haired guard now standing outside the door to the rec room. A couple of hours had passed since he’d squabbled with Sage, and he’d realized he had left Juanita without talking to her or giving her the gift he had in his pocket. At least that gift gave him a legitimate reason to return. He had little else to do on this ship, and he would much rather converse with her than twiddle his thumbs in the cabin he’d been given.

“And why is that?” Orion asked.

“The captain’s orders.”

“He said I couldn’t go off alone with them, not that I couldn’t see them at all.”

“He told me not to let you in.” The guard lifted his shoulders and appeared apologetic, but he also didn’t look like he would budge.

Orion thought about trying to force his way in, but like all Star Guardians, the kid was in great shape and would have had excellent training. Granted, Orion was no pushover in a fight, and he’d studied under a master for a year on Vrangar 7 before getting into bounty hunting. He figured he could take the kid.

But to what end? He wasn’t going to kill anyone here, and the guard would simply call Sage and complain. Orion would end up confined to his cabin, if not to the brig. If what Sage had said about that research scientist was true—and as much as his brother irritated him, Orion had no reason to think him a liar—then he was surprised Sage hadn’t put him in the brig already.

What would happen when they reached Dethocoles? Would Sage truly report that he’d killed a citizen? Would the jurors have any benevolence in their hearts when Orion explained that it had been self-defense? And that in the dark, he hadn’t known…

He dropped his chin to his chest, bothered by what he’d done. It had been a mistake—who even would have thought that an innocent under the manipulation of an egatar chip would be among those sent to engineering to help with repairs?

“Are you all right, sir?” the guard asked.

He sounded more wary than concerned, like he expected Orion to feign illness or come up with some other distraction in order to surprise him with an attack. Why did these people all think so poorly of him? Yes, he was a bounty hunter instead of a Star Guardian, but he captured criminals, the same as they did. He, too, protected humanity. He wasn’t a rapist, thief, or murderer.

Except, he apparently was a murderer.

He growled in frustration, and the guard’s hand dropped to the stunner on his belt.

“Sorry.” Orion stepped back and lifted his hands. “Yes, I’m fine. I’m just having a bad day.”

The guard’s lips twisted. Orion wished another guard were on duty now, not the one who’d heard Sage’s condemning words.

“Listen, if I can’t go in, will you ask the woman with the blue-tipped black hair to come out here for a minute? I have something of hers, and I forgot to give it to her earlier.”

He had been too humiliated to even look at Juanita after Sage’s words. A part of him still wanted to hide in his cabin for the rest of the trip and never have to meet her eyes again. But she would go back to her own world eventually—hells, he’d promised to help ensure that happened—and then he would likely never see her again. It seemed a shame not to spend time with her while it was a possibility. Assuming she actually wanted to spend time with him. He truly had no idea. Before, he’d been the only one on that ship not being an asshole to her. Now… He looked at the green-haired guard, a handsome young fellow. One of dozens of handsome young fellows on the Falcon 8. If these women were like the rest of the human women in the galaxy, they would soon be drooling over the heroic Star Guardians. How would he look in comparison?

“What is it?” the guard asked suspiciously.

“This.” Orion dug the little device out of his pocket. Juanita had dropped it when running away from Bray, and he’d had a chance to recover it.

“What is it?”

“A computer of some kind, I think. Maybe like our logostecs.” Orion pressed the single button on the front, and a screen lit up with a picture of a younger Juanita with two people that were probably her parents. He couldn’t read the words on it, but it seemed to require a passcode for further access.

“It looks clunky and primitive.”

Orion shrugged. “I guess.”

He had been amused when Treyjon had suggested the doctor would be primitive. He’d seen the dark side of their planet from the sky as the slaver ship had flown down. There had been huge light-filled metropolises all over it, and there had been satellites and even a tiny space station in orbit. They were probably only fifty years from where his people, the Dethocoleans, had been when they had built ships capable of exploring their solar system, and the gate that led out into the galaxy. Treyjon’s people had still been nomadic hunters and gatherers when Orion’s ancestors had found them and brought technology to their world. Most of Treyjon’s people still lived that way.

“I can give it to her.” The guard reached for it.

Orion withdrew his hand. “I want to give it to her in person.”

“The captain said—”

“That the women were guests and weren’t to be imprisoned. If she wants to come out in the corridor, she should be allowed to.” Orion lifted his chin, trying to cow the kid a bit.

He was probably only three or four years older, but the guard was one of the youngest Star Guardians he had ever seen, so he might very well feel like a rookie and be uncertain of his place on the ship. Orion certainly felt that way with Sage right now. He didn’t want to have to beg his brother to let him in to talk to Juanita.

“Stay here, and I’ll inform her that you and that box are out here,” the guard said. “If she wishes to come out to see you, she can.”

“Thank you.” Orion could ask for no more.

As the guard slipped through the door and it slid shut behind him, Orion shifted from foot to foot, feeling nervous. What if Juanita didn’t want to see him? What if all his worries came true? Now that she had Star Guardian protectors, she hardly needed him. And now that she knew he’d killed an innocent man, what would she think? That he was as much a brute as that Bray?

The door opened again before his thoughts had time to spiral too far downward.

He saw the guard first, and his shoulders slumped. But then Juanita squeezed past his broad shoulders to come out first. The guard looked bemused.

“I guess she really wants her primitive box,” he said.

Juanita ignored him, and so did Orion, especially when she smiled at him.

“Hi,” she said brightly.

She waved, but turned the gesture into a clasp of his arm. It was a light, innocent touch, but for some reason, his mind lurched back to that cubby in the engineering room, the way they had been pressed together, her breasts against his chest, and the way his thoughts had kept straying to inappropriate places. Given the situation, his arousal had been ridiculous. He’d had to shift his hips to keep from jabbing her in the stomach with his cock, and he wasn’t sure he’d fully succeeded.

It was the hair, he decided, that had been the problem. That desert sage scent tickling his nostrils and making him think about how lovely it would be to free her locks from that thong, to push his hands through her hair, to see it falling about her bare shoulders. He’d had a hard time paying attention to what the engineers had been doing, instead thinking about how much he’d wanted to wrap both his arms around her, lift her legs to fasten around his hips, then push her against that machinery and kiss her hard and deep.

“Is that my phone?” Juanita asked.

“Er?”

He’d forgotten he held the thing, and he fumbled it as he lifted it toward her, almost dropping it.

The guard looked on, his expression growing wry.

Orion wanted so much to shoo him away. He also wanted… to find trousers that weren’t so tight. But maybe the zetrandi hide would be better. It might keep things from revealing themselves and embarrassing him. As if he hadn’t been shamed enough today.

“Yes, I saw it in a pile of things the slavers took from you and the others and remembered seeing you drop it when you ran away.”

“You saw that while you were fighting that guy?” She smirked, her brown eyes twinkling as they met his. “You must have superhero powers. Or at least superhero eyes.”

He swallowed, not having a response for that. He was too busy taking in the way she was looking at him, the way she didn’t seem disappointed by what she’d heard Sage say, by what he’d done. Was murder commonplace on her planet? Was a murderer not shunned? That seemed unlikely. More likely, she hadn’t grasped everything Sage had said. The translators weren’t perfect, and there weren’t always words for terms in other languages.

“No wonder you like her,” the guard said. “Superhero eyes.”

He snorted. He also looked at Juanita’s backside.

Orion had the urge to wrap his arm possessively around her and growl, “Mine.”

But she wasn’t. And she never would be. One day soon, she would return to her world, where she might very well have a husband or lover.

Juanita bit her lip and blushed at the guard’s words. Even if the teasing had been more for Orion than for her, she looked uncomfortable, like she wished she hadn’t said anything. Again, Orion wanted to gather her in his arms and pull her away from the guard.

“Thank you for bringing this,” she said formally, some of the brightness gone from her eyes. She looked down to examine the device.

“You’re welcome.” It came out sounding stiff, and he winced. He wanted her eyes bright for him, and he also wanted her to put her hand back on his wrist.

Juanita pressed a button, and the screen he’d seen before lit up. She tapped at the display, and it unlocked, more options coming up.

“Damn, the battery’s already under fifty percent. I don’t have my charger, not that you’d have 120-volt outlets on your ship, I’m sure.” She looked up, her eyes sad.

It was such a rare expression for her that he found himself distressed on her behalf. He groped for a solution, though he didn’t know what it would be. Logostecs charged themselves from human body heat.

“Oh well, I’ve got enough juice to record some stuff before it dies.” She smiled, some of the energy returning to her eyes. “Do you think I could do that? Get some videos of the ship? Oh, and if we’re flying by anything neat?”

He almost promised to take her on a tour before remembering that he couldn’t. Unless…

“One moment,” he said and lifted his logostec. “Lieutenant Treyjon?”

The device located the man and pinged him.

Fierce, throaty growls sounded over the speaker.

“Are you training those svenkars, Lieutenant?” Orion asked. “Or am I interrupting some passionate sex?”

Juanita’s eyebrows lifted.

A few barked orders sounded, followed by the snapping of jaws, and then silence.

“There aren’t many ladies among the Star Guardians,” Treyjon said.

“Not sure that answers my question. Green Hair here is pretty sexy.”

Orion had the pleasure of seeing the kid blush a deep shade of red. Excellent.

“Ensign Bystrom? That’s true. He’s got that sweet, tight ass.”

Now the kid was utterly horrified. Good.

“Treyjon, are you on shift, or do you have some free time?”

“Well, I’ve got the pups to train…”

Was that a yes or a no?

“I’d like to give one of the women—er, whichever women who want to go—a tour of the ship, but it makes sense to bring a native Star Guardian along for that.”

“So you’re not alone with the women?” Treyjon asked.

Orion gritted his teeth. He hadn’t wanted to bring up his reasons, especially when Treyjon had been there and well understood them. “Yes,” he bit out.

He hoped he could convince Treyjon to trail along behind him at a distance so that he and Juanita could talk privately. He was curious about her world. And her.

“Oh, and could you tell me the name of one of your more helpful engineers?” Orion added.

“Helpful? Like one that’s willing to fix the environmental controls in your cabin or one that can actually talk to you using words you can understand?”

“Er, can I get both?”

“Not on this ship.”

“Then the first one.” Orion looked at Juanita’s device. “I need something electronic finessed.” Finding a way to interface with that computer of hers might be difficult, but surely a bright engineer could come up with something as simple as a cable and converter that would resupply it with power.

“Go with Hierax then. He’s chief of engineering, so nobody except the captain can yell at him if he’s working on things unrelated to keeping the ship’s systems running.”

“Thanks. The tour?”

“All right, I’ll come down for a few. Might as well take this new pup around and get her used to the ship and its crew.”

“Uh, it’s going to be leashed, right?” When he’d been imagining having a nice chat with Juanita, it hadn’t involved having Captain Cutty’s dreaded svenkar lunging at his throat every two minutes.

“She will be collared for now, yes.”

“Good.” Orion wondered if he should hunt down a stunner. The captain wanted him to carry one, after all, right?

A soft knock sounded at the door behind the guard, the guard whose cheeks were still a touch pink. He checked on it, and one of Juanita’s friends stood there, along with a couple of others. Were they worried about her being with him? Checking up?

“Just wondering if that food is on its way?” one asked. “Also, this girl, Lisa, wants to know about restroom facilities.”

“There’s a head over there. A fountain and a sink that folds out too. Uhm, I guess I have to show you how to work everything.” The guard frowned at Orion. “Lieutenant Treyjon’s coming?”

“He’s on his way, yes.” Orion sighed inwardly, annoyed that the man wouldn’t trust him for the three minutes it would take him to show the women how to pull out a toilet. He wanted to punch Sage for the insinuations he’d made with others standing nearby. Including Juanita.

“All right. Be good, bounty hunter.”

“You better just take care of your own ass, Ensign,” Orion said. “Especially since it’s apparently such a sexy one that the other men are noticing.”

The guard flushed again and hurried inside.

“I don’t know why the captain doesn’t trust you,” Juanita said as soon as they were alone. “Isn’t he your brother? I barely know you, and it was obvious right away that you’re… a good man.”

“Thank you for that,” Orion said, touched by her words, even if he didn’t always live up to them. “Sage and I have never been that close. He’s seventeen years older than I am, so I was only a year old when he left home for the army. My other two brothers are fifteen and fourteen years older, so they took off early too. My parents tell me I was a delightful accident. Well, Mom says that. Dad was never that delighted with me. But he had Sage to be delighted with. And Leo and Taurus, I suppose. They were smart and didn’t try to follow in Sage’s footsteps. They became doctors and have a practice together back home on Dethocoles.”

He shut his mouth. She hadn’t asked for his history, and hadn’t he been more interested in asking about hers?

“I should probably be trying to piece together the puzzle of you people by asking how humans ended up all over the galaxy,” Juanita said. “Assuming you’re not aliens somehow. And for that matter, how did the children in your family all come to be named after constellations out of Greek mythology on my planet? But I confess to being more curious about you, right now. You basically grew up as an only child, you say?” Before he could do more than nod, she went on. “I’m an only child. My parents wanted more, but once they started the restaurant, they were so busy that they didn’t have time for it. They always worked so hard. They still do. They’re both immigrants, and they just always wanted to have the American Dream, you know? And to provide for me. I was practically raised in the back of the restaurant. I spent a lot of time reading and watching TV shows while staying out from under the cooks’ feet.”

“Greek mythology?” he asked, his mind snagging on that. “You have our gods on your world? Zeus? Hera? Poseidon?”

She nodded, and he stared, stunned.

“Maybe it’s really true,” he whispered. “Maybe your planet is Gaia. The birthplace of mankind. The world from which my ancestors were originally taken.”

“We call it Earth, but I’ve heard of Gaia. That’s from Greek mythology, too, right?”

“Mythology.” His mouth twisted. “I’m not sure if I can trust the translator here, but I think you’re calling mythology what we call religion.”

“Oh, maybe. I think most Greeks on Earth are Christian Orthodox now.”

“I have no idea what that is.” Orion scratched his jaw. “But I don’t know all the religions out there. We—people—were taken from all different parts of Gaia by the Last Wanderer and deposited on different habitable planets all over the galaxy. They have different religions and cultures, and we’re not sure now what originated on Gaia and what changed after people were in their new homes.”

“This is incredible. The Last Wanderer? Who or what was that?”

“Legend says that someone from a race we know only as the Wanderers, those who we believe built the wormhole gates, visited Gaia long ago and fell in love with a human woman there. Somehow, they were biologically compatible, or maybe the Last Wanderer had the scientific ability to do some gene tinkering and make offspring possible, but they were fruitful and had twenty children.”

“Twenty!”

“Very fruitful.”

“No kidding.”

“The story says that his people were on their way out of this galaxy and off to explore a different one, but he was so smitten with the woman that he didn’t want to leave. Ultimately, he did, because he knew she wouldn’t live as long as his kind did, and he didn’t want to be alone without any of his family left. But he wanted to make sure his children and their descendants would thrive for all eternity. He believed that leaving them on one planet would be foolish—all it would take to wipe out the population would be a cosmic accident, such as it being struck by an asteroid, or for a devastating plague to come along. So he left one of his children on Gaia with his lover, but he took the other nineteen with him and put them on different planets in the galaxy. He also took nineteen groups of people to go with the children, enough for them to eventually find mates and for the species to be started anew on all these different worlds. This would ensure that his line—and humanity itself—would survive, even if a couple of the planets were destroyed or the race died off on some planets due to viruses or self-destruction.”

“That’s an incredible story. But what kind of mother would let her lover take nineteen of her twenty children away?”

He shrugged. “It’s our creation story, but we truly have no way to know how much is true. It’s based on writings that are well over two thousand years old. Also, the number of children keeps changing as we find more planets with humans on them. I think it was posited that there were twelve when my Dethocolean ancestors first took to the stars. It was eighteen when I was a kid.”

“Wow. Huh. That’s a lot to digest.”

“Yes. You’re a lot to digest for me, as well.”

“Me?” Juanita touched her chest.

“I mean, not you.” He gestured to indicate her specifically. “But your people. And…” He eyed the little computer, which seemed clunky and limited compared to his logostec. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but we always assumed that if we found Gaia, the people would be incredibly advanced. When our ancestors were taken, it was without more than a handful of belongings each. They had to start everything over from scratch.”

“Well, we’ve had a lot of wars and political and religious differences in the last two thousand years, so to put it mildly, things didn’t always progress smoothly or linearly. If each group that seeded a different planet came from the same culture, the same part of Earth—Gaia—then maybe those people had fewer troubles and were more cooperative in achieving their goals. And, by the way, I can’t believe I’m talking about this as if it’s reality. I would love for this to all be real. Except maybe the part about the aliens that eat people, the rest sounds so cool. Also, I hope I didn’t offend you when I called your religion a mythology.”

“No. Most of us are atheists or agnostics these days. We usually only invoke the gods for curses.”

“Oh, good. Orion?” Juanita tilted her head, looking at him curiously. She didn’t go on, waiting for him to answer first. That was odd, since she’d been speaking so freely.

“Yes?” he asked.

“What did Captain Sagitta mean about… killing someone with a chip? He wasn’t right about… what he said, was he? You’re not really… uhm, I mean, those were all really evil people, right?”

Orion’s heart sank into his boots. He’d been right. She hadn’t fully understood. And once she understood, she would condemn him. The same way his brother had.

He closed his eyes. Would it be horrible to lie to her? What would it hurt?

She didn’t know his galaxy. She would go back to her planet one day, and wouldn’t it be preferable if she remembered him as someone heroic? Someone who’d helped her and who had been a “good man?” Rather than as someone who preferred killing criminals to transporting them home because they were always trouble? Or as someone who carried a deadly weapon instead of a stunner because it was safer for him and better for his deadly reputation that way?

But as he gazed into her imploring eyes, he realized he couldn’t lie to her.

“I thought everyone on the slaver ship was there to kidnap people, to sell them to the Zi’i and to profit from the pain of others,” Orion said slowly. “It didn’t occur to me that anyone would be there against his will, but a chip such as the one the captain described can use pain to enforce obedience. Apparently, one of the men I killed in the dark in engineering was innocent and was being forced to work for the slavers. It was a mistake, but… Sage is right. It could have been avoided if I carried a stunner and hadn’t been using deadly force.”

“Oh.”

Her face had shut down as he spoke, and he had no idea what she was thinking.

“Uhm, thanks for bringing my phone.” She avoided his eyes as she waved it. “I should get back to the others.”

She turned toward the door.

“Juanita,” he blurted, stepping after her.

He grabbed her arm, wanting to stop her before the door slid open at her approach, but alarm flashed in her eyes, and he let go, jerking his hand back. He didn’t want to scare her. And it distressed him that he could scare her.

She’d said she trusted him, but had that changed now?

She stopped and faced him again, and he groped for something to say, something to bring back the brightness in her eyes.

“Didn’t you want to go on a tour?” It seemed an inane thing to ask after they’d been talking about people’s deaths, but he pushed on, having no other ideas. “To record the ship?”

“Oh,” she said again, that syllable so flat and hard to read.

She looked down the corridor, and he could imagine her wrestling with herself, not wanting to spend time with him but wanting to go. That stung, but could he blame her?

Orion swallowed. “I can ask Treyjon to take you around without me,” he forced himself to say.

He imagined Treyjon smiling at her, showing her the views out the portholes, and maybe finding a romantic little nook where he could slip an arm around her back and lean in for a kiss.

She looked up into his eyes, and he forced himself to shove the image aside, to smile and nod to verify what he’d said.

“I would like to see the ship,” Juanita said, “but…”

“I’m sorry I’m not as good a man as you thought.” His smile turned sad as he lifted a hand in apology. Or at least that was what he meant to do. Somehow, he ended up brushing his knuckles down her cheek.

They lingered of their own accord, then traveled to her lips. This might be the only chance he got to touch her. He wanted to memorize the contours of her face.

He watched her eyes for a sign that she was repulsed, that she wanted him to stop. She was standing still, her lips parted slightly, her gaze locked onto his. What did that mean? That she was too stunned to react?

He shifted to touching her with his fingers, running his nails lightly along her cheek and to her ear. He pushed a wayward strand of hair back, curling his fingers around her ear and trailing them down her neck to her collarbone. Though he kept holding her gaze, he was aware of how close his hand was to her breasts, how they pushed at the material of that thin blouse, how easy it would be to undo a few of those buttons and see her bare skin.

He should step away, give her plenty of room to walk away if that was what she wanted. He wasn’t blocking the door. She could go any time.

But she stepped closer. Her breasts touched his chest, as they had in that corner in engineering. This time, he was the one to freeze. Except for one part of him. His cock swelled, pressing painfully against his trousers.

She tilted her head back, her lips parting a little more. If that wasn’t a request for a kiss, he didn’t know what was. And he complied, slipping an arm around her waist as he pressed his lips to hers.

He expected a similar reaction from her, perhaps a gentle pressing of the lips. But maybe she would shove him away in horror, and he would realize he’d been reading her completely wrong.

Instead, she sucked at his lower lip. His entire body ignited as if he’d been thrown into a volcano.

He wrapped his other arm around her and kissed her hard. Hard and hungry.

She stiffened—with surprise?—and put her hands on his chest. To push him away? Gods, he didn’t want to stop, but he started to lower his arms, to let her go.

But she murmured a protest against his mouth and sucked on his lip again, sending that startling zing of heat through him. She ran her hands over his muscles, feeling their contours through his vest. With a surge of delight, he realized she didn’t want to push him away. She wanted to feel him, to rub him.

And that felt so achingly good.

But in the back of his head, he knew they should stop. That guard or Treyjon would appear any second. Yet he shifted his body into hers, so she could feel all of him. She moaned, still rubbing his chest with her hands, exploring it through his fitted vest. She slid her fingers over his hard nipples and paused, her thumb finding the peak of one and moving back and forth over it.

Images of shoving her back against the wall rushed into his mind even as blood rushed into his aching cock. He would tug down her pants, and she would wrap her legs around him, and he would dive into her, sating the lust surging through his veins.

“What the—” a voice said from down the corridor.

Orion flinched and jerked his lips from hers. Treyjon. He’d know the tracker would come, but he’d thought he would hear—

As Orion turned his head, realization halted the thought midstream. It was Treyjon, yes, but it was also Sage. He stared at Orion, his face flushed red with fury.

Abruptly, another realization came. That this didn’t look good. He remembered thinking about pushing Juanita back against the wall, but he’d actually done it at some point, and he was locked to her, as if he was forcing her to stay there. And the way her hands were on his chest… Gods, it had to look to them like she’d been trying to shove him away. They didn’t know she’d been rubbing his chest and kissing him back.

“She…” He didn’t quite know what to say, and that’s all he got out.

“Ensign Bystrom,” Sage roared.

Orion leaped back from Juanita. Juanita winced at the roar, embarrassment stamped on her face. Or maybe she thought she’d done something wrong? Gods no, he’d been the one who shouldn’t have—

The door slid open, and a startled Ensign Bystrom looked out. Juanita ran past him and into the rec room.

Orion wanted to call after her, but he dared not take a step in that direction. Even though he understood why she’d run from the captain’s ire, he knew it only made the situation look worse.

The betrayed look that Ensign Bystrom gave him confirmed it.

Bracing himself, Orion turned back toward Sage. His calm, collected, strategic genius of a brother who was never ruffled, neither in battle nor at the antics of his men, was more furious than Orion had ever seen him.

“You tell him,” Sage ordered Treyjon. “I’ll fucking kill him if I stay here.”

It didn’t sound like hyperbole.

Sage stalked away, his body almost quivering with rage.

Treyjon stood in the corridor with Cutty’s mean svenkar on a leash. It snarled in Orion’s direction. Treyjon looked like he wanted to do the same, but he spoke instead, his voice cool.

“We’ve got a problem. The ship has been compromised.”