CHAPTER TWENTY

This was getting old. Fast.

Jaina hadn't dared move around too much in her makeshift prison. The crashcouch, which had served as her eternal seat and bed, would've been fine for a few hours, but even then – for a normal flight – she would've gotten up and down from time to time, not just stared at the ceiling for hours on end. But she stayed this way because to stand risked a mild yet painful zap from the stuncuffs secured around her wrists and ankles. Who was she kidding? Sitting up too quickly or even simply moving the wrong way shifted them just enough to warrant a scolding from the belligerent devices.

To make matters worse, she had no defense against them. True, Jag had set the stuncuffs to a mild setting – knowing him, he'd probably used the mildest one until Jacen had warned him otherwise – but even so there was enough current to shock her senses and confound her reasoning. She cursed her brother mildly. If the setting had been a hair less, she could've borne the consequences of moving about while strapped in the cuffs. But Jacen had known her precise tolerance. That little bag of bantha poodoo –

Suddenly, the Shadow shuddered. The familiar tug of a hyperspace drop. Instinctively Jaina rolled on her side and sat –

"Ow!" She shook her hands as vicious currents of energy raced along her skin. "Kriff. Frag. Sonofasith!"

Somehow, even with her brain protesting and her body rebelling against the assault, Jaina's Jedi training took over. Force or no Force, finding her center and convincing her body to act against instinct wasn't that hard. Mind over matter. She stilled. Breathed. The stuncuffs fell inert. Now all she felt was an odd tingling in her arms and fingers. A few moments later, the residual sensation was completely gone. The only thing left was complete and utter frustration.

Under normal circumstances, Jaina would have accessed the Force and shunted the stuncuff's barrage aside. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn't have endured any pain of note – not at this setting, anyway. Under normal circumstances, she would have found a way to get the toolbox down from its position high on the storage shelves and picked her way out of this mess.

She grinned wickedly, imagining the justice she already would have exacted on one Jagged Fel.

"When I get my hands on you, Jag, you'll wish I was my – Wait!"

Jaina glanced down at her feet. Maybe she had only imagined it. Rolling her eyes up and playing back the previous few seconds, she began to think not. Her hands and fingers had hurt. Definitely. But she couldn't recall any pain from her feet. Perhaps…

Prepared for the worst and hoping for the best, Jaina leaned over gingerly. Her body was stiff, her muscles wary of another shock. Yet she had to know.

She extended the index finger on her right hand, aiming it for the small button on the binders around her ankles. With a slight nudge the button depressed.

Click.

"Yes! Yes, yes, yes. Finally something going my way. I can't believe my luck…"

She paused, staring back down at the stuncuffs half off her ankles, then kicked hard to send them flying across the room. They landed with a sharp clang against the far wall.

"Luck's got nothing to do with it, does it, Jag? Convenient to leave your girlfriend bound hand and foot, thinking she's stuck like that. So sure I would figure it out, were you? Well I did, and it will be your mistake. If you think that headbutt hurt, just wait to see what my knee can do…"

Jaina's voice trailed off at the abrupt sensation of movement. Her aunt's ship was designed first and foremost for fight and flight and secondly as a passenger vessel. For that reason, the centrifugal effects of any turn were easily felt, and this turn was hard and fast. Out of habit Jaina reached out with her Force sense, trying to lock onto a landmark by which to mark the scope and degree of the turn. What she felt was more like…nothing.

"Sithspit! Being Force-blind sucks!"

The tug of inertial energy pulling her toward the hull wall ended, and forward flight resumed. Without a point of reference she was unsure how complete the turn was, but she had felt enough to figure it was close to a full reversal. She also knew she had been captive on the Shadow for a couple of hours, but ventured a guess it wasn't long enough to have reached Dathomir. In fact, she knew it couldn't have been long enough because she wasn't even –

Bweorweorweorweor.

– hungry.

"I take that back," Jaina said. "Maybe a little hungry."

The crashcouch shimmied, and the room elongated in a timeless second. Then everything fell still and back to normal. The Shadow had jumped to hyperspace again.

Jaina set her feet into a balanced position, held her hands out before her, and focused on her core muscles. Taking great care, she rose.

"What are you up to, Jag?"

She waited silently for an answer to come. None did. Not one to wait around for life to pass her by – even if it was this boring, maddening Force-blind alternate universe where Jag had transformed into some insane nutcase with red ale paranoia and her brother had gone to the dark side to play the cruelest joke ever on her and Jag both – Jaina decided action of any kind was better than the alternative: going crazy right along with the two pillars in her life.

Treading slowly and deliberately, Jaina set out to scope her surroundings. There had to be one spot in this hold where the ysalmiri Force-neutralizing bubble didn't work. There had to be.

Jaina moved from one corner to the next, testing for the Force with each step, every time waiting for that burst of energy to fill her soul. Each step she was sorely disappointed. By the third corner, Jaina felt her nerves running headlong back toward frustration and stopped dead in her tracks. "There can't be that many ysalamiri on Vikova. Can there?"

She shook her head. She had to stay positive. She still hadn't paced off the hull wall. It would be the hardest to guard from the Force. Even one of those lizard slugs couldn't survive in a vacuum. They would have had to put two, probably three, at both outer corners to get Force repulsion all the way across that side. Closing on the midway point along the hull section, Jaina steeled herself for relief, yet at the same time she just knew.

Jacen had checked every inch. Not even a glimmer of the Force. Or a whisper. A pinch. Nothing.

"Jag first, my dear brother. But you'll be a close second. When I get through with you both, you'll wish you'd never messed with me. I can't even begin to describe the ways I will make you both suffer."

At some point she had started stalking the room. She took a break from her tirade but kept right on walking, back and forth along the hull wall. Pacing her cage, so near to freedom, and the Force, yet so far.

After only a minute of tracking a path along the wall, Jaina felt a bead of sweat form on her brow and her lungs demand more air.

"Oh, great!" She threw her bound hands up in frustration.

"Ow!" And lowered them just as quickly when the stuncuffs reprimanded her for the excessive movement.

"All right, all right." Jaina resumed her pacing. "Jagged Fel, you are well on your way to becoming Ambassador of Men Who Have Met the Bootheel of Jaina Solo."

"Crushed into the ground like the piranha beetle that I am?"

Jaina spun at the sound of his voice. She wasn't sure what made her madder – simply the sight of Jag or not noticing he had arrived. Not that it mattered. Her eyes narrowed to mere slits.

"Pulverized to a grain finer than Tatooine's sand."

Jag grinned that sexy halfcocked smile only he was capable of. "I love it when you talk dirty."

Glowering, she said, "I don't envision you enjoying it. I'm picturing it –"

"Rough?"

"Exactly."

Upon her answer, Jag's expression slipped from mischievously happy to seductively playful.

Every fiber in Jaina's body stiffened. "You arrogant nerfherder!"

Jag only shrugged. In the same instant his face went from teasing to grim. "I see you figured out about the ankle binders."

Stepping out of the hold's doorway, he crossed the room with slow, deliberate steps. Only then did Jaina recognize the small serving plate in his hands. Without making eye contact Jag bent over and deposited the plate on the crashcouch. When he straightened Jag's gaze was shielded and inscrutable, as if he were trying hard not to show how much he cared.

"You should eat," he said.

Jaina's body wanted to cross her arms defiantly over her chest. She stopped the impulse a moment too late, and got a sharp jolt because of it. "I'm not hungry," she gritted from between clenched teeth.

"You should be. It's been over…It's been long enough."

Jaina's nostrils flared. He was fighting the need to be truthful with her. He didn't trust her.

No, he would always trust her. Something had changed.

Of course. Jag had changed his mind.

With a flicker of hope, she took a step toward him. "A minute ago, did you turn us about?"

He took a step closer as well. "Don't you mean, are we going back?"

Jaina snuck forward. "Yes."

"No." He shook his head once for effect. "We're not going back."

"Then where?"

Not a sound passed between his lips. Nor a slip in his eyes as hard as jade. Jag's stony demeanor had its benefits, but at times like this it could be exasperating.

"What?" she snipped. "The Solo plan not working out for you?"

"I thought you wanted me to be a Fel."

Jaina's brow furrowed momentarily. It was amazing how he could disarm her with something as simple as his words. But in true Solo fashion, she came back swinging harder. "If you're up to it."

"Oh, I'm up to it. I'm ready to put a hundred percent into it – being the man you need. My only question is, are you up to it?"

"Am I up to it?" Jaina charged the last few steps until she was toe to toe with Jag. "I'm the one who was waiting in my bed for you to come to me. I'm the one who wanted to tell you how much I wanted to be with you. How much I missed you. How I finally decided to take you up on your offer. How stupid I had been –"

"Jay-"

"Don't interrupt me, Jagged Fel. I'm just getting started. Instead I wake up here to find you've gone mad. That you don't believe in me enough to talk to me. That you feel compelled to kidnap me and force me to see how wrong things are. Well, they are wrong, Jag. All wrong." She yanked her wrists up to present the stuncuffs and yelped for it. "Sonofasith!"

"Jaina."

Stomping her foot, Jaina came down on Jag's boot. "I'm not finished. When it's your turn, I'll let you know. Now where was I? Oh. Right. You've got me in stuncuffs, Jag. Stuncuffs! And not in a fun way. You've taken away my right to participate in this relationship. To face things because I can, not because I have to. This thing you've done is a betrayal. How could you have so little faith in me not to believe I would come to this decision on my own?"

"What decision?"

"The decision that you're the only man for me. That I couldn't imagine a life without you. But now I think I must have been on spice because there's no way in my right mind I would've decided to fall head over heels for a cropdusting, ill-mannered, stuck up wannabe Imperial, no good son of a second rate TIE flying traitor."

"Jaina." Jag breathed her name like a warning.

"Can't take the truth, Jag?"

"I can handle the truth. Just leave my family out of it."

"Why should I?"

"Because I –"

"Say so? I see how this works. Jag Fel dictates –"

"Jaina."

"– how this relationship is going to be –"

"Be quiet."

"– run. We don't have a communication problem we've got a communication –"

"Shut."

"– breakdown."

"Up."

"So now you're going to tell me when it's okay to-oooo-uuuummm…"

In an instant Jaina plunged from a fuming mad rant to breathless delirium. Her lips had been silenced by the press of the skilled application of Jag's mouth upon them. She wanted to argue, to protest. To break the wonderful heady vacuum that existed between them. Instead she felt compelled like a magnet to draw closer and fuse with his being. No matter how hard she fought it. She wanted – no, needed – to enjoy the taste and dance that always accompanied Jag's kiss.

Eventually her traitorous body submitted completely, melting into him.

Jag's arms had been around her, holding her, but abruptly her shoulder felt the pinch of a firm grip shoving her away.

"What did you do that for?" Jaina blurted out.

"Kiss you?"

She nodded mutely.

"Because you could use a good kiss. Because you needed to be reminded of what it was that was right between us."

"Oh." She bit her lip. "It was only a kiss…"

Jag's expression hardened to one Jaina hadn't seen in a long time. Not since Ithor. Not since he had defied decorum and a room full of politicians to meet her. Jaina could not remember seeing him more determined or vulnerable. Ever.

"That was more than a kiss, Jaina. What you need to decide is if you still feel what it is I feel every time we're together." His eyes bored into hers, and she actually feared to interrupt. "We're not going back, but we do have to go forward. It's up to you, Jaina. You get to choose."

He spun on his heel and marched for the door, pausing with his hand at the control. He spoke with his back to her. "I'm not taking us to Dathomir like your father. We're going to a place my second rate traitor of a father once took my mother. Someplace safe. Someplace very few people even know exists." He sighed softly. "When you're ready to talk, I'll be waiting."

Jag triggered the door and walked through without another word.

Jaina snorted. "You'll be waiting?"

The only reply was the door sliding shut. She walked over to the crashcouch and flopped into it. "I'm the one tied up here."

8