The next morning, I woke feeling more rested than I had in, well, ever.

I didn’t know what time it was or how long I’d rested. The crystal Jordan had given me was on the table next to the bed. It shone slightly, one edge of it seeming to glow then the other. I’d never been around wealthy women, so I’d never seen it used as jewelry. I almost thought it a shame that they got smoothed and shaped at all. Maybe it was better to leave these things as they were when we found them.

But what did I know?

I got out of bed. With no clothes except the ones I’d been in for the auction, I was bound to get pretty smelly in no short amount of time. If I couldn’t find the washer, I’d have to ask someone where to clean my clothes. My attire was awful. Short black skirt, red V-neck sweater that showed off just how round I was everywhere… They’d been picked out by the slavers to make me more attractive to whomever wanted to buy me. The black high-heeled boots completed the look. Everything about my outfit was detestable. I was a simple girl who liked to be outside, not dolled up to attract sexual attention. A solid, steady shoed kind of a person. I’d taken the shoes off when I’d gone to bed, but now I had to put them back on. It wouldn’t do to wander around this ship barefoot.

Sliding the crystal in the pocket of my skirt, I stepped into the corridor. As much as I was certain I couldn’t keep it, no one had really ever given me anything before. Everything seemed quiet, but farther along the corridor I could hear music.

I followed the sound. The closer I drew, the more overpoweringly loud the beat of the rhythm became. Rounding the corner with my hands over my ears, I nearly collided with Bo. We banged into each other, and I almost went down, but he caught me in his strong arms.

“You okay?” He laughed. “I’m like a wall unto myself. Knock into me, and you’re going down.”

His wording sounded so strange, so foreign, and not at all how anyone on my planet spoke. It was kind of… adorable. Why had I thought he was so scary? “I guess I’m used to being the wall. I’m not small. Usually when people bump into me, they go down.”

He shrugged. “You’re small compared to me. Did you sleep okay?”

“Very well, actually. Surprisingly so.”

“Did you eat?”

I hadn’t yet, but I wasn’t hungry. Food in the morning was not always my best friend. “I’m okay. Actually, I was hoping to find a place I could wash these clothes. Or some soap to do it with in my bathroom.”

His gaze traveled the length of my body as though he was checking out what I wore. It must have been a sight.

Still, as his gaze took me in a heat started in the tips of my toes and traveled up my body, settling in my cheeks. Given my pale complexion, they probably turned bright red. The heat didn’t dissipate then either, but seemed to find a home in my core. My breath quickened and my heart rate sped up. I was…turned on by his perusal.

It was impossible to grow up on a farm and not know the way it worked between men and women from a very young age. My parents constantly rutted, which was why I had so many sisters.

I’d never felt the urge, myself. My mother had sat my sister and me down the night before the slavers came and given us a talk about it. Truth was, I’d been half paying attention, wondering if it was possible to run for my life and determining that it wasn’t. Still, she’d hoped we’d find our husband situation a pleasurable one. She’d been matched to my father without meeting him and had always found him attractive.

I had hoped for kind, not sexy.

Yet… Bo looking at me had turned me on, something I hadn’t expected to happen. I wouldn’t mind, not even a little bit, if he kissed me.

“We have clothes that will fit you. Come on. The last ship we took over had a shipment of it. I don’t move clothing in the Dark Planet section. We go closer to Earth borders for that. The women in that sector can actually afford clothes they don’t make for themselves. I’ll give you a bunch of stuff.”

I blinked rapidly. Oh no, I’d been standing there, blushing, and feeling… things. He’d obviously not been as affected. Squaring my shoulders, I looked for something to say, but my brain didn’t seem to want to work. Okay. So, these things happened, maybe.

Following Bo, who had a very tight rear end displayed nicely in his gray pants, to a storage area gave me a chance to regroup. I stared all around me, having to turn in a complete circle to adequately see the room. The rest of the ship might be out of sorts but there was nothing disorganized about where they stored their goods.

Shelves lined the walls, and everything appeared to have its place. There were labels on the shelves and even what seemed to be color-coding. “Do you upkeep this room?”

“I designed the system. Makes it easier for the machines to get the stuff on and off when we take a ship and when we dock. Simpler than tripping over chaos. Twenty years ago? Yeah, sure. We were a mess. Two decades of doing this, and it’s clear what works and what doesn’t.” He walked forward to the shelf labeled clothes. “Have a look.”

I followed him over. Clear boxes filled with clothing covered the shelf, more than I’d ever seen. “Women are to the left,” Bo explained. “So from this part on. I don’t have them organized by size. We’ll have to dig through.”

An unexpected sadness draped me. “And these belonged to other people? And you took them?”

He side-eyed me. “On your world, the way you were raised, there’s good and bad right? One does not steal, one does not murder?”

I nodded. There were some basic dos and don’ts I believed people should abide by. Stealing was a big no-no.

“No one sets out to be a thief, but I’d be careful to take too many morality and ethics lessons from your family. They sold you to slavers who would have let a man sell you off to his friends over and over until you died from the pain of it or from some kind of infection.” He pointed at the clothes. “Pirating has always been a way of life in the Dark Planets zone. I don’t steal from the poor. This was clothing women on a planet were selling, had already sold in fact, to a corporation. We just took it from the corporation.”

His words slammed into me. I sucked in a breath even as I began to calculate what happened. I’d upset him. My question had apparently brought to the surface some things that probably bothered him. He’d struck back. And he was right. My family had sold me off like they did every few years with our livestock.

Even understanding what happened, I burst into tears. I covered my face with one hand to hide the evidence of my reaction and used my other hand to grab one of the boxes that looked like it had shirts in it.

Crying didn’t mean I suddenly became incoherent or incapable. I had worked hard, accomplished many tasks, around the farm in abject hysterics. My tears were almost a secondary response to pain for me. I couldn’t shut them off until they finished, and I’d never mastered not crying at all.

Bo swore. “Oh, fuck. I mean, I’m sorry. I should not have said that.”

I shook my head, kneeling over the box. “Yes, you should. I was out of line. You’re clothing me, and I got judgmental? No, I am not in a position to lay morals or ethics or even thought on anything you do, Bo. Forgive me.”

I started going through the box. Some of the shirts would be way too small. I had a big bust and…

Bo tugged me into his arms, effectively cutting off my thoughts. “Please stop crying. I’m sorry. It’s been such a long time since I had a real conversation with anyone but River and Jordan. They’re used to me blustering. That’s all it is. You had every right to question, and I should have bit my tongue. It’s my issue, not yours.”

I sniffed. “I’m sorry I cried. I can’t seem to control it.”

Bo smelled like cherries. I loved the taste of them, and it had been a long time since I’d had any. He held the back of my head, keeping me close to his shoulder. I breathed him in. “Well, it’s good to cry. Healthy, even. Particularly when some asshole is yelling at you after you’ve had a huge trauma. That’s too much for one person to handle.”

I laughed and pulled back. “Can we start over? Thanks for the clothes.”

“You’re welcome.” He ran his thumbs below my eyes, wiping away the remnants of my tears. “Sorry I made you cry.”

I sniffed. “I cry a lot.”

“Well, that won’t be because of me.”

I left the storage room with a new wardrobe. As I’d gone through it, I’d ended up sorting a lot of it for Bo then walked away with a box of clothes that fit me. At no time in my life had I actually had so many things to wear before. Somehow, I wouldn’t focus too much about where they’d come from. As Bo had pointed out, I didn’t really understand the ins and outs of this. If the people who made them had been paid, I wasn’t going to obsess.

Who knew what was right and wrong anymore? My parents had sold me, and it wasn’t that strange a practice where I came from.

I set my things on the bed, expecting to hang them up or fold them when a knock sounded. After I swung my legs over the bed, I opened the door to find River standing there. He smiled before he looked past me. “Oh, good. Someone got you some clothes. I was going to suggest it. Did you eat?”

“I don’t in the morning.”

“Boo,” he said, shaking his head. “Hiss. You need food in the morning. Never mind, I’m not in charge of you. Can we talk? The four of us have to sit down and have a conversation.”

I nodded, glad my tears had long dried. Was River the sort of person it was okay to cry in front of? I couldn’t tell. Not everyone would react as nicely as Bo.

“Sure.”

River was friendlier this morning than he’d been the night before. I’d thought him grumpy and loud—even with his blue-eyed gaze that seemed as though it could melt ice—and now he seemed sort of funny and easy going.

“Should I just come with you?”

He grinned. “Sounds good. Did you sleep okay?”

“I did. Very well.”

River looked down at his feet as he walked, and I wished he wouldn’t. I liked getting a glance at his blue eyes every time he spoke. “That’s good. Has someone showed you around the whole ship yet?”

“I followed Bo to the storage room from down the hall. He was listening to music. I’m not sure what he was doing when I interrupted him. Other than that, I haven’t seen the ship.”

He raised his head slightly. “We’ll fix that. And if Bo was listening to music, he was doing maintenance.”

We came into a small conference room. There were five chairs and a small, broken down table that leaned slightly to the left. Two of the chairs had peeling wood on the side. They must not come in here a lot, or they didn’t care that the place was falling down around them.

Bo and Jordan came through the door right after us, and each took a seat around the broken furniture. Jordan sat in one of the peeling chairs.

I loved furniture and had made some when there was time for such a thing, usually when my father took a nap during the spring and summer months. The humidity in the air always made him knock out for a few hours in the afternoon.

I bet I could fix this one and it wouldn’t need to be entirely replaced.

“Good morning, Priscilla.” Jordan smiled at me. “Did you sleep okay?”

They’d all asked. It was kind of… cute. “I did. Really well, thanks. Did you all sleep okay?”

All three of them nodded. Bo touched my arm. “Feeling better?”

“Why was she feeling badly?” River looked between Bo and me.

“I was an ass and made her cry.”

Jordan jumped to his feet. “What?”

I held out my hand. “I cry really easily. He didn’t do anything wrong. I was being rude.”

Jordan pointed at Bo. “Unacceptable.”

“All right.” River banged on the table. “Everyone sit. Now.”

Grateful for the end of that discussion, I took his direction and plopped down in the closest chair. I couldn’t imagine even considering not obeying River. Jordan and Bo both sat but not as fast as I had. Bo crossed his arms, and Jordan shook his head.

It was the latter who finally spoke. “If you think you’re giving orders, Sandler, we’ll have to go over how things are again.”

River held his hands up. “Relax. I need to get some things out. That’s all.”

Jordan must have accepted that answer. He nodded before he winked at me. My cheeks heated. I was probably all red again. I forced myself to turn my attention to River. He was a beautiful man, and he held attention really well.

“I’ve had some time to think about our conversation last night.” He made eye contact with each of us. “We did so much spontaneous stuff in the last few days, so out of the ordinary to us, that I didn’t react properly. I apologize, Priscilla, if I in any way made you feel unwanted here.”

He stopped speaking, and it took me a moment to realize he actually wanted a response. “Oh, that’s okay. I… I must be a bit of a surprise. Here you think you’re rescuing someone from a kidnapping and a lifetime as a sex slave, and instead you get a girl whose own family doomed her to it. Not quite the same scenario.”

River’s gaze hardened. “I’d still have done it.”

“You looked like… an angel.” Jordan grinned at me. “We all saw you even before you went down. The three of us were struck dumb and that never happens to all three of us with any woman.”

River never gave me a chance to respond. “Be that as it may”—he cleared his throat. He seemed to do that a lot. Was it some kind of nervous tic?—“I think we need to consider things, and we need to give Priscilla a way out. I would never want you to feel stuck, like you didn’t have other options. I’ve seen too much of that.”

This conversation was way out of my depth. I wanted to say the right things and at the same time make sure I was honest in my responses. I really hoped I didn’t end up crying again. “A way out?”

“Marriage is all about consent. All parties have to say yes, be that one-to-one or plural.”

This time I interrupted him. “Not where I’m from.”

“Well, it should be.” This was the first time Bo spoke since sitting. He swiveled around in his chair. “Everyone involved should get to say yes or no without feeling they have a gun to their head.”

I really hoped Bo wasn’t currently feeling like he had a gun to his head. We hardly knew each other, and maybe we shouldn’t be married. The scene I’d made in the storage area probably hadn’t helped. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be with him, but it bothered me to think he might not want me.

And even in my own head, I knew that didn’t make any sense. Okay.

“Right, and Priscilla had no consent. She never would have. The slavers and her family took it away. She wasn’t even conscious to marry us. We need her to have some time to decide if she even likes us, wants to spend her time pirating the quadrant, or if she’d like a very different life. To that end, I read and read the intranets last night.”

Bo leaned forward. “Have you slept?”

“No. That’s neither here nor there.” River rubbed his forehead.

“Sure it is. You only get to acting like king of the manor when you haven’t slept.” Bo groaned. “I hate that I know that.”

River took a deep, audible breath. “I’m not even going to respond to that. The point here is I’ve found a safe place we could take Priscilla. It’s a place on the border of Earth space called Francesicina. It’s a small reserve where they take in women who have nowhere else to go. The planet, Zeta Four, supports the facility. This is real; it’s not fantastical. We’re going to head there. It’ll take two weeks. In that time, Priscilla, you can decide if we are what you want, and we’ll do the same with you. How does that sound? That way if the answer is a resounding no, then you have somewhere to go where you will not be stuck.”

Jordan drummed his fingers on the table. “There will be several stations between here and there where we can make sales.”

“Right. Then it might take us three weeks, but same idea.”

Bo cleared his throat. “That would certainly take care of the consent problem.”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

All of their gazes fell on me. I had to answer. “If everyone is comfortable with this, then I am, too.”

“Good, then it’s settled.” River nodded before he yawned.

Jordan rose. “I’ll go set the course.”

And just like that, we had three weeks to know each other… or part forever.

I made a survey of the ship. Their cargo rooms, of which there were three, were in perfect shape. They obviously cared about the condition of the goods they were selling in the black market. I wondered if everyone did or if these guys were simply more fastidious pirates.

Other than that, the guys didn’t seem to care very much what their living spaces looked like or if it was all falling down around them. Well, they seemed to spend a lot of time working on the ship itself. The engine room was clean, and to my completely untrained ear, everything sounded as though it was running smoothly. Nothing groaned, nothing squeaked. A low, constant hum filled the air and even in less than a day awake on the ship, I didn’t hear it anymore.

Unlike on the slaver’s bigger vessel, I didn’t feel like I might fall out of the sky on Malice.

Since I was going to stay, even just three weeks, I was going to clean this place up for them. It wouldn’t take much. I’d seen that they had wood, hammers, and screws in the storage rooms. Did the wood bring some kind of profit? I thought my parents had said, on occasion, that there were places where there was a shortage of wood. The corporations had stripped them bare. Everything that could go to Earth went to Earth.

That was how things had always gone.

I ran into River during my inventory of the state of the laundry facility. The counters, where presumably a person was to fold clothes, had collapsed. I wasn’t sure I could match the wood in here. I might have to make new shelves altogether.

He carried a basket full of clothes. “Oh, hey.” He cleared his throat. “Do you need to do laundry? I can wait.”

“Not yet. Since Bo gave me some clothes, I’m good for a while.” This wasn’t my ship, and I was basically a guest. I really needed permission to do what I’d spent the last hours cataloging. “Would it be okay if I fixed your furniture? I like to do it, and I think I could certainly contribute that way.”

River Sandler—and I really needed to ask him if he was somehow connected to the Sandler Space I heard about occasionally or just named for it—made me want to justify my existence. I didn’t know anything about him. We’d barely spoken and yet I already felt as though I might be behind on some race I hadn’t known I was participating in.

I wanted him to look at me with those blue eyes, and when I looked back, I wanted to see happiness in them. He should be pleased I was in the room.

He looked at the shelf. “I guess we have let this place go to hell a bit.” He shrugged. “If you want to, go for it.”

“Okay, then I will.”

The ship jarred slightly before it tilted portside. River dropped his clothes and grabbed me in his arms, holding me close to him until Malice righted itself. I gasped. “Are we under attack?”

“If we were under attack, Jordan would sound the alarm. No, this area is loaded with space junk. Some of it is salvageable and sellable. He must have seen something he wanted and stopped us to go get it. If you don’t have space legs, you don’t roll with it all that well.”

It was right then I realized he smelled like cinnamon. I took a deep breath to really bring his scent into my lungs. He was quiet for a second, and I wondered if he noticed. I glanced up at River before I pulled out of his embrace. He had a look on his face I couldn’t decipher. I really didn’t spend very much time with men.

I wasn’t sure I could ever understand how they thought about things.

“Why do you smell like cinnamon?”

He blinked, and then he grinned at me. I could get lost in that smile. “The soap I use has a touch of that scent. Is it too much? I like the smell.”

“It’s… lovely.” I stepped back. “So how will you get the stuff out of space?”

He scratched his chin. “Out of space? Oh, Jordan and the space junk. Come on, I’ll show you.” He extended his hand, and I took it.

We walked together to the other side of the ship. There was a window to the outside. All I could see was the vast darkness of space. “Stand right there.” He moved so I could be in the center of the window. I swallowed. There really was nothing out there, not even any air. Space was unforgiving and never ending. Soon, the lights turned on. I heard a clicking noise, and a claw extended from somewhere on the outside of Malice. The claw traveled in front of my line of vision then vanished. A few seconds later, the clicking sounded again. This time, the claw came back holding something in its grasp. I took a deep breath. I was sure there was a lesson there somewhere about blackness and light. But, all I could think about right then was how cool it was that this ship had a giant claw.