She sniffed again. “Nothing really to do now but wait,” she muttered. “You guys want to play a few rounds of chess?”
* * * *
Jared was still in turmoil when he settled in his seat and pulled his harness on. He found himself wavering between his anger at being ordered to watch Damon’s back when he had more than half hoped that the bastard would take a bullet in the head or catch a mortar in the chest, and confusion and hope.
“She said that we were family,” Kane said, a touch of wonder in his voice. “Do you think that she meant that in the most intimate sense that humans use that term? Or do you think she was only saying that because we are crewmates?”
Damon scowled at him. “Do not be more of an idiot that you can help!” he growled. “There is no blood bond and certainly no contractual bond! She could not have meant it in any sense beyond the fact that we are crewmates!”
“Do not call my friend an idiot!” Jared snapped. “Heisan idiot, but I will brain you with something if you call him one again!”
Kane divided a glare between the two men, trying to decide which of them had most insulted him. “You only think that you are brilliant because you know how to seduce a woman, but you know no more about courting than either of us, for that is not the same!Ipleasured her! I have that programming as well as you, although it is not as sophisticated, and I have not had experience to learn more! So you need not feel so gods damned superior, you fucking fuck droid!
“I am sorry that I promised Chloe to watch your back! I had thought that this would be a very good time to throw you under something that would flatten you!”
“I was thinking more along the lines of blowing his head off,” Jared said grimly. “Or mayhap throwing him into a recycling crusher.”
“If you believe that that comes as any great surprise,” Damon snapped, “then you are as much an idiot as Kane! I am notjusta fucking fuck droid, gods damn it! I have the same programming for combat as you do. Regretfully, I cannot regress to the muscle bound ape mentality that the two of you share, but I had planned to throw the two of you into the recycling crusher when you made your move. I suppose I will not be able to now, however, when Chloe made me promise not to.”
Jared decided to access his data to discover what an ape was before he brained Damon for the insult. As he had expected, he was outraged when he discovered what the creature was. Apparently, Kane had accessed it, as well. He punched Damon in the face. Damon punched him back.
“Gods damn it!” Jared yelled when Kane jolted him. “I am trying to fly here! Save it until we are on the ground!”
“If this is what the three of you consider watching one another’s back,” Reuel’s man, Corin, snapped, “I believe that I will join one of the other squads when we are on the ground. Or better yet, I will shoot all three of you! It will make room for more at Chloe’s table.”
“You had better mean Chloe’s table in the gods damned mess hall!” Kane growled, “because if you mean what I think you mean I will kick your ass when we land!”
“I will help him!” Damon offered. “Because I am thinking the gods damned bastard wasnotthinking about the table in the mess hall!”
“She isourfamily!” Jared growled. “And there are already five too gods damned many men in this fucking family!”
“Exactly what do you meanfive too many?” Kane demanded. “She did not say you were her family and stop there! I know that you would like to think that you count more than anyone else only because they dragged you onto the ship first, but Chloe does not think that way and it isheropinion that matters!”
“He cannot be first with Chloe, gods damn it!” Damon said tightly. “Iwas first with Chloe!”
“If you keep throwing that up to me,” Jared growled, “I will knock your teeth down your throat … again.”
“You did not knock my teeth down my throat!” Damon snapped. “You only knockedonedown my throat and loosened two others. And you will not catch me off guard to do so again! It takes too gods damn long to grow another!”
“He is worried that Chloe will not think him as pretty without his teeth,” Kane said with a snort.
“That is a very good thought,” Jared said meditatively. “It is worth a try.”
“You will not be as pretty to her, either, if I knock your nose a little to the left!”
Jared thought about it for a few minutes. “Well, there are at leastthreetoo many, gods damn it! I am damned if I understand why Sebastian, Lucien, and Thor believe they have any claim at all!”
“If Chloe considers you knuckle-heads family,” Corin growled, “then you will have plenty of opportunity to beat the shit out of one another later. Can we focus on the gods damned mission?”
Damon and Kane exchanged a look and turned almost at the same moment to slug Corin. His eyes rolled back in his head. “Now that he has decided to shut his mouth,” Kane growled, “I would like to know what we are going to do about Sebastian’s squad. I do not see that they have any sort of claim either and if we rid ourselves of them, then we will have twice as much time with Chloe.”
Chapter Thirteen
“We can always fuck,” Thor suggested hopefully. “That would be a far more pleasurable way to spend the time, and it would help to relieve stress, as well.”
Chloe gaped at him for a moment and then glared. “How can you think of fucking at a time like this?” she demanded.
Thor frowned. “I have not seen that a very great deal distracts my mind from fucking, especially now that I have. Before, I had only thought that I would like to very much. Now that I have, Iknowthat I like it very much. It is very odd, I suppose, that I think of it more now than I did before, but my balls did not bother me nearly as much before I had done it as they do now. I cannot tell a great deal of difference between now and before with my cock. It was always standing up at the least comfortable times, but the balls are definitely different.”
