“You can’t give me what’s already mine.”
“Actually, technically it’s mine now,” Agatha said. “I did the work, remember?”
I beamed at her.
“Fine. But I’ll be the pilot.”
She ran a finger down my nose, tickling it.
“You’ll always be my pilot,” she said.
We kissed again.
The ground shook beneath my feet.
What a woman.
“That was the best kiss yet,” I said. “I felt the moon shift.”
Agatha frowned and drifted to the window.
“I felt it too. Only, it wasn’t the moon. It was the building.”
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
I recognized the sound immediately.
I grabbed Agatha and whipped her away from the window.
The drone zipped past the window and then paused, turning and attempting to peer through the grey covering.
It leaned in close and thought it’d seen us for sure.
Then it pulled back and joined two other drones that buzzed off.
“They found us…” Agatha said.
“They found this building. They haven’t found us yet. Where are his clothes?”
The sudden shift in topic made Agatha’s brain freeze.
“What?” she said.
I moved through the room, looking for the small pile of clothes I knew should be there somewhere.
“Over here,” Agatha said.
I tossed Draw’s sheer fabric to one side and found the device I was looking for.
It was small and black and fit neatly in my pocket.
“What is it?” Agatha said.
“The device that will unlock the shuttlecraft and allow us to get out of here.”
I moved to the window and peered through the grey lattice at the ground below.
“Are there any guards?” Agatha said.
“Not that I can make out,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean they aren’t out there.”
Draw gnawed on his restraints but wasn’t having much luck.
The machine had been designed for him not to escape.
“I’m going to let you out of this machine,” I said. “But first I need you to tell me how to get out of here.”
Draw’s breath sawed through his nose as he peered at me.
His eyes slid over to Agatha and his expression softened a touch.
“Go through the door at the end of the hall,” he said. “Turn right and use the stairs. They’ll take you to the back exit.”
I released one of the straps from his arm and flabby legs and another from his head.
“I’ll let you open the rest,” I said.
It would buy us a little time to get out of there.
I turned on my heel and marched across the room.
I was surprised to find Agatha wasn’t at my side.
She stood beside Draw and my heart was in my throat.
This guy was dangerous and I had released some of the restraints.
Couldn’t she see that?
“Hey,” she said, smiling at Draw warmly. “You don’t need to be ashamed about this. We’re not going to tell anybody. And your men will never know.”
Draw responded by smiling appreciatively up at her.
“Thank you.”
“And you know,” Agatha said, bending down to retrieve the candle she’d dropped earlier. Its wick was still aflame. “You could always do this for yourself.”
She put it in his hand and they held it together as she tipped the wax over his skin.
He hissed with a mix of pain and delight.
Agatha joined me and I led her out the door.
I cast one last look at the obese figure in the bed and watched as he raised the candle over his body and tipped it to one side.
I swear, I would never understand how a man could prefer to do that than use the gorgeous hot body of the girl I had at my side right now.
On the plus side, it was better he was the one being (deliberately) violated than the other way round.
I prayed to the God of Small Mercies as we bolted down the stairs in the direction of the hangar and the route to freedom.
Freedom had never felt so damn close.
The stairs were too wide for me to take in bounds of two or three at once.
I could only manage one and a half at most.
I clutched Agatha’s hand and together we hurried down the stairs with a leap of excitement in our hearts that could only come with the knowledge of approaching freedom.
We would soon be out of here.
Still, the thought was tinged with sadness.
Agatha wanted to return home.
And I would want to go back to living a pirate’s life.
Or did I?
The idea of running down a freighter and marching on board like I owned the place didn’t seem quite so exciting anymore.
Or as necessary.
I had saved up a good amount of booty over the years,
I saved it with a single purpose in mind: to get more.
If anyone asked me what I wanted to get “more” for, I couldn’t have answered them.
It was the pursuit of money that mattered, not what I intended to do with it.
Now, the pursuit felt like the final few droplets of rain after a heavy downpour dripping down the back of my collar.
She was the reason I was gathering that money.
Agatha.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had always been waiting for her to come into my life, for her to make a nest and get comfortable inside it.
And now here she was.
Her hand held tightly onto mine and it was the most natural sensation in the world.
She was my fated mate.
There was no question about that.
We eased around the final flight of stairs, careful to slow our approach, not knowing what we might find when we crossed into view.
Earlier, I had left a group of armed pigs a little worse for wear and with good reason to give me a good hiding when they saw me next.
They weren’t there when we came to the ground floor.
A dented metal door lay in the middle of the wall and I knew with certainty I wouldn’t hear much through it even if I tried.
I tried anyway and was disappointed I was right.
Agatha touched me gently on the arm, concern rimming her eyes.
“Be careful,” she said.
“You know me,” I said, returning her smile easily. “I’m always careful.”
The dent in the door had morphed the sheer plate and made it stab into the
