Collision Course

Chapter Six

She needed to get Kell out of the club. He looked like a man on the verge of turning dangerous. A simmering, dark intensity charged the air around him. As soon as they had learned about the auction, he hummed with tension beside her. Pressed close to him in the booth, she knew every shift of his body, every tightening of his muscles, and the sensation resonated in her own.

After a little more smuggler and scavenger shop talk, she managed to shoo away Bern and Leyron. The two men sent her one last look, fraught with longing and disbelief that she’d bought herself a pleasure slave, before they melted back into the seething crowd.

“We have to discuss strategy,” As Kell spoke, his breath curled warmly against her neck.

“Not here.” She slid out of the booth, and he followed. Normally, she enjoyed coming to Kura’s,

but today the atmosphere felt both oppressive and empty, as if everyone here was trying desperately to pretend they were having a good time, but not fully succeeding. The word she heard most often at Kura’s was profit.

No one ever talked of home, or fighting for a cause they believed in. Not like Kell.

She cast a quick look behind her. He moved through the crowd like a shadow knife, carving his way. People skittered from his path. Even here, in the thieves’ den, he commanded respect and generated a fair amount of fear.

And no wonder. He’d literally fought his way off a ruined planet. From a street brawler to an expert pilot in the 8th Wing’s most elite squadron. He made himself into the man he was now through his own force of will.

It was a stunning revelation, and yet, somehow, it all made perfect sense. Everything she’d seen of him indicated that he was a man who took nothing for granted, who forged his way through the galaxy using his strength and brains.

Damn him for making her want him even more.

She and Kell had almost reached the elevator bay to take them back down to street level, when a man stepped in front of him. The man had a blocky body but small eyes. She didn’t recognize him but scavengers came and went all the time.

Kell glowered at the man, but either the stranger could not or refused to take the hint. He stood in Kell’s path.

“Don’t I know you?” the man asked.

“No,” came the low, quick answer.

The man frowned. “Could’ve sworn we met somewhere. You seem familiar.”

But Kell was already shouldering past him. “I’m just a pleasure slave.”

The notion that Kell could be “just” anything was almost laughable. Still, the block man didn’t try to stop him as he and Mara got onto the elevator.

They did not speak, not for the ride down, nor did either of them say a word until they were spat back out onto the crowded, gritty street.

“No one is selling Lieutenant Jur.” He glared at the street as if it was somehow responsible for his comrade’s capture. “And no one gets their hands on that Wraith.”

“We’ll find out the location of the auction tomorrow, then make our move.”

Until then, she needed rest. The taxing day had left her feeling strangely raw.

In short order, she found them a nearby lodging that looked relatively decent. As she and Kell approached the desk, the manager smirked at them.

“A room for you and your pleasure slave?” the manager cackled.

She nearly rolled her eyes. Of course, word about her would spread through the streets of Beskidt By faster than an olej spill. Gossip and rumor were prime sources of information here, everyone wanting to know everyone else’s business to find an exploitable angle.

“There’s extra cred for you if it has a nice, big shower.” She fixed the manager with a piercing glower. “A real shower, with water. Not a UV stall.” She had enough of that on her ship, and, though she loved being on the Arcadia, some planet-bound delights were too good and rare to pass up.

The manager’s thick eyebrows rose. “Gonna cost you.”

“Give her what she wants.” Kell’s voice edged with the possibility of violence if he wasn’t obeyed.

She shivered with awareness.

The manager gulped. “For the night, or by the hour?”

“The night.” Her words were heavy, ripe with possibility. She resisted looking at Kell, knowing that if she did, he’d read her intent plainly. Too plainly. Her desire for him scared her a little. She couldn’t remember being so hungry for a particular man, and she wondered if that meant she was weak or vulnerable. Both qualities she tried to avoid.

The manager finished checking them in, not without receiving a substantial deposit first. He slid the key chip across the battered counter, and she scooped it up.

“Take the lift to the top.” He smirked again. “Nuptial Suite.”

As if anyone on Ryge ever made the mate commitment. Maybe some had multiple wives or husbands. That seemed more likely.

The room itself wasn’t palatial, despite its grand name. Kell prowled it, studying everything.

Someone, presumably not the manager, had make token gestures toward decoration, with wide swaths of warm-hued silks hanging on the walls and from the ceiling. Suspended lamps in jewel tones cast flickering light, illuminated by simucandles that turned on when they entered the room. Neither she nor Kell missed the enormous bed that took up most of the room. She turned away from it to continue her examination of the suite. True to the manager’s word, the hygiene chamber had an actual water shower. Definitely worth the expense.

“Why—” Kell began, but stopped when she held up a hand.

She moved toward a ventilation grate. “I suppose this room will do. Don’t forget to turn down the bed the way I like. I’ll want extra pillows.” She spoke loudly as she removed the grate. Inside the ventilation shaft, she found exactly what she expected, and held it up to show him.

He scowled at the tiny surveillance bot. “Yes, Mistress.”

With a few quick adjustments, she powered the bot down before replacing it in the vent. “And I want my kahve hot first thing in the morning. Black. No sweetener.”

“I know, Mistress.” He stalked the room, then plucked up another surveillance bot from beneath a lamp. Instead of shutting the bot down, he crushed it between his fingers.

They found one more bot, this one hidden in the hygiene chamber, and deactivated it.

Back in the main room, he turned to face her. “Everything clear?”

“That should be it.”

“Good.” He prowled closer, darkly intent. “You could’ve told those idiots I was your partner, not your pleasure slave.”

“They know me too well. If I said I had a partner, it would have set off all kinds of alarms.”

He kept coming nearer, shoulders wide, arms tight and hewn, and she found herself backing up,

caught in the strange net of desire and apprehension.

“I could have been your mate.” He looked dangerous, a man on the verge of losing control. “Not your slave.”

She couldn’t tear her gaze from his lips, watching in fascination as he shaped the suggestive words.

“They’d believe that even less.” She sounded breathless, and, indeed, her lungs struggled to take in air as the wall came up to meet her. Trapped. “I’m too…strong willed…to be anyone’s mate.”

He stopped his pursuit, yet left only a few inches between their bodies. Heat surged from both of them. His face was all hard angles and shadows, his eyes dark and burning. He planted his hands on the wall, one on each side of her head. Caging her. Yet she knew with absolute certainty that if she pushed him away, or ducked under his arms to break free, he would let her go. Giving her the choice.

“Not smart. Buying a pleasure slave without sampling the merchandise.”

“What do you suggest?”

“A test flight.” Then he lowered his head, his mouth met hers, and she went up in flames.

The kiss they’d shared in the cockpit had been the barest hint at the desire that blazed between them now. Kell took her mouth, as she took his, and they consumed each other. An incendiary, shared devouring. He had firm but supple lips, audaciously confident in the way he tasted her, shaped her, as if her mouth, and everything else she had, belonged to him and him alone.

But the kiss didn’t belong to just him. Mara stroked the inside of his mouth with her tongue, and his flavors of whiskey and potent male intoxicated. Gods, she wanted to crawl inside him, claim his strength completely.

Even though his hands remained splayed on the wall behind her, she felt the kiss everywhere, as if he caressed her body with hot demand. Against the silky fabric of her blouse, her nipples tightened, and a sweet ache sounded in her pussy. She pressed her thighs together, determined to take this as far as it could go.

Finally, she broke the kiss long enough to gasp, “So far, I’m pleased with my purchase.”

“We haven’t even started.” He peeled one of his hands from the wall, and she held herself still,

waiting for his to either go straight for her breasts or between her legs. Instead, he stroked down her hair and rumbled with approval. “So goddamn soft. Hair like moonlight. Like dreams.”

Her heart fluttered. In his aching, beautiful words, she almost believed that there was more between them than desire. Yet that could not be true. They had this, a visceral need and attraction—

and that’s all they could ever have. 8th Wing and scavengers didn’t mix unless blackmail was involved.

She didn’t want to think any of that. All she wanted was him, and the pleasure he offered. She tilted her head back so he could touch her hair even more and to give him better access to her mouth.

He took advantage of both. She purred as he threaded his fingers through her hair, pressing his broad-tipped fingers into her scalp with exquisite pressure, and kissed her deeply.

A little pang of loss trilled some time later when he took his hand from her hair. Pleasure replaced loss as he trailed his fingers along her neck, feeling the speeding of her pulse, then caressed the bared, sensitive flesh of her chest before— oh, yes—cupping her breast.

She had small breasts, and his large palm covered her completely. The thin fabric of her blouse offered hardly any barrier between her flesh and his. His heat seared her, the rough skin of his hand rubbing against her beaded nipple. Silk gently abraded, and she arched into the sensation. He swallowed her gasp as he tugged the fabric down, baring her, and he gently but firmly took her nipple between his calloused fingers.

The energy and concentration she had grown to admire over the past few days was now solely directed at her—and it would have been frightening, if she hadn’t reveled in it.

He pulled back from the kiss just enough to stare down at her with smoldering eyes. With her breasts bared, pressed above the fabric of her corset, her mouth swollen from kissing, she probably resembled an Auroran courtesan. And she didn’t care. Delighted in it, to see the answering hunger in his face and his barely leashed body.

“You devastate me.” He sounded like a beast straining at its leash.

“Good,” she answered, because he did the same to her.

He stared at her, only just holding himself back. “Tell me what you want, Mara.”

“If I said I wanted you to stop, would you?”

“Yes.” The word was a guttural scrape, and he looked tortured by the thought. Yet she understood that he would honor her wishes. “Don’t tell me to stop.”

She not only trusted him, she trusted herself. She had the strength to yield control. It was hers to bestow or take away.

“Don’t stop.”

His mouth twisted, almost savage, then he bent and took her breast into his mouth. She barely held back a cry as she clutched his head to her. His tongue swirled over her nipple, teasing it into even greater sensitivity. The bristle on his cheeks rubbed against her flesh. The same ritual was repeated for her other breast, and soon she writhed against the wall.

“More.” She pushed him back just enough to peel the shirt from him, and he stood, gleaming and taut, a celestial map of male glory etched in muscle and bone. She couldn’t stop herself. She ran her hands over his gorgeous body, feeling his power at the same time that he shuddered beneath her touch.

She finally understood the scars that marked his flesh. A pilot wouldn’t have sustained wounds like these, but a street brawler, determined to fight his way to a better life, would. So she stroked and caressed him everywhere, silken muscle and knotted scars, and everything that he was felt beautiful.

She ran her hand down the corrugations of his abdomen, and his hand captured hers before she could go lower, to the straining length of his cock pressing against the front of his pants.

“You deserve to get all the mileage you can.” He held her tightly, almost brutally. “Don’t want this test flight over too soon.”

He moved her hand so that she clutched at the ridges of his back, then he laughed darkly when she moved her hand down to seized the tight muscles of his ass.

“I like what I feel,” she murmured. “Up to now.”

He took that as the challenge it was, and, with a growl, he kissed her once again. No choice but to fall into it, a reckless, headlong plunge into desire.

A moan escaped her as she felt the rough pads of his fingers on her bare thighs. He’d teased her with gentle strokes in the club. Now his touch was bold, seeking. Both assertive and sensitive, he stroked her shaking muscles, until she felt on the verge of going mad from need.

His fingers delved under the hem of her skirt, then higher. When he brushed the outside of her panties and found them damp, he growled at the same time that she whimpered. He stroked the fabric before dipping beneath to touch her flushed, wet sex. She surged at the contact, and when he rubbed against her clit, she bit him.

But even with her skirt bunching around her waist, he fought to get the best angle to touch her.

Finally, with a frustrated growl, he tore her panties. The ripped fabric drifted to the floor. Then his hand covered her fully, his fingers stroking between her lips, his thumb on her clit. His other hand gripped her waist, holding her to the wall, otherwise she would have collapsed in a heap of ecstasy.

He held her that way, pinning her as he worked her relentlessly. Sensation overwhelmed as she felt herself gleam with pleasure, crazy with desire. She clawed at his back.

“Gods, Kell.” She panted into his mouth. “Yes. Just like that. Yes.”

The orgasm tore through her like a supernova, heat and light and release. She would have fallen to the ground if he hadn’t held her in place against the wall. Her cry could have been heard from one end of the solar system to the other, but she didn’t care. It was so good.

When she could open her eyes, she saw him staring at her, licking his fingers. Watching his tongue lap up her juices set her body aflame, and she wanted him so badly she shook with the force of it.

“I’m going to fuck you, Mara.” His gaze burned her. “Here. Now.”

“You’d better,” she managed to gasp, and was rewarded with his low laughter.

“All 8th Wing get the xalina vaccine.” Which meant that he couldn’t carry or transmit any of the social diseases that once plagued soldiers.

“And I have the Tawaret chip implant.” No children for her, thank you very much.

Their gazes locked, both understanding at the same moment that there would be nothing between them, only his skin to her skin.

They both tangled with the button and zipper on his pants, and he moaned in relief as his cock sprang free. She licked her lips. His cock was thick, curved and perfect. She reached for it, but he batted her hand away.

“I’m in command here.”

“Are you sure about that?” Deliberately taunting, she leaned against the wall and angled her hips up so he could see her slick pussy.

He cursed, something crude and raw, and she loved it. This was the man without control, and she was the woman who made him lose it. Power coursed through her.

His hands gripped her thighs, lifting her up. She felt the slight raised square on one of his palms —the chip that allowed him to fly a Black Wraith ship. That detail fluttered away as he braced her against the wall, his strength taking all of her weight. Then he drove into her. Gods. He filled her almost to the point of pain, but that gave the sensation an extra edge, and already she found herself at the very beginnings of another climax. When he started to move, thrusting with deep, hard strokes, the orgasm broke in long, liquid waves.

“Can’t…stop…coming.”

“Won’t let you stop.” He spoke through clenched teeth. His hips drew back and then surged forward.

She moaned, the wall hard at her back, Kell hard against and within her. Her legs wrapped around him. She barely noticed that she was almost completely dressed, from her gauntlets to her boots, but what consciousness she could spare for this element pushed her orgasm even further, longer. It felt as if pleasure burned her from the inside out, until nothing would be left but a charred shell—and she didn’t mind that at all. This was the best way to meet eternity.

He was fierce and relentless, his strong body moving, words of praise and demand tumbling from him as he fucked her with brutal, tender purpose. No one had made her feel this way before. No one touched her as he did now, knowing what she needed and what she craved without having to say anything.

“Come.” She dug her nails into his shoulders. “Come inside me. I want that, Kell.”

“Yes…Mistress.”

She almost laughed, but the sound was lost as he groaned out his release. She felt it, the heat of him spilling within her, shockwaves moving through him, through her.

For some time, they remained as they were: panting, sweat-slick, Kell still deep inside her,

holding her tightly to the wall as her arms and legs wrapped around him. Clasping him to her as if she feared letting him go.

They draped across the bed, still partially dressed. Neither had the strength to adjust their clothes or take them off, so all they could do was lie there, temporarily sated, as evening began to fall.

She lay on her stomach, he on his back. Their hands drifted, brushing against each other, creating little fires of sensation. It was warm and comfortable and intimate.

“I was a princess,” she said.

He turned his head to gaze at her, expression opaque. “On Argenti.”

“The Skirens are one of Argenti’s finest and oldest families.” Faint ridicule shaded her words.

She had heard that phrase most of her life, and almost believed it was inscribed upon the family’s crest. “Involved in all levels of the government. Upstanding citizens. One of my great-great-grandmothers is on a cred card. Our annual Solstice Gathering is broadcast to every corner of the planet.”

The cameras had always been there, as the Skirens made offerings to the Goddess, as they danced. Years went by before she realized other children did not have cameras at their Solstice Gatherings. For them, it had been about family and celebration, not presenting an image of honor to an avid public.

“From the moment of my birth, I was groomed to create alliances. That’s what children are to the first families of Argenti. Pawns used to further ambition. It was no different for my siblings and me.

Before I learned how to speak, my future mate had been selected.”

He shifted on the bed, but said nothing. The idle brush of his hands had stopped. She had no idea what he was thinking, but she couldn’t stop the words that came from her now, too long held inside.

“A good match. Even I knew that. Piers was a Gavril. An alliance with his family would have profited everyone. And he was growing up to be a decent-looking man. A little quiet, a little easily manipulated, but there was nothing terrible about him. He and I were supposed to join in the mating ceremony the day after my sixteenth birthday. The planning of the event began two years earlier. ”

Kell touched her then. He picked up her right hand and examined her wrist. “No mating band.”

“About six months before the mating ceremony, I went to my mother. Told her I couldn’t go through with it. I needed to make my own decisions, chart my own course.” A rusty laugh scraped from her. “That wasn’t well received. My family tried everything to get me to change my mind. Pleas, bribes. Threats. Punishment.” She still had the marks on the soles of her feet.

His grip on her wrist tightened, the slightest increase of pressure.

“Finally, my father said I did not have to mate Piers.”

His grasp eased until he released her.

“But if I didn’t, I would be cast out. Not just from the family, but from Argenti. The Skirens have enough influence to have someone banished.”

He rolled over onto his side and stared at her. She couldn’t meet his gaze, just kept staring at the silk-draped walls, dappled with colored light from the lamps. Shabby attempts to make the room elegant, so different from the jewel-encrusted columns and lavish tapestries that hung on the walls of her ancestral home. Her home that wasn’t her home. It never had been. Everything had belonged to her family, even her.

“I spent my sixteenth birthday on a freighter heading off-world. Didn’t know where I was going.

Didn’t know anyone. I knew nothing about how to live on my own—being a princess does that to a girl. All I knew was that I could never go back, or else face execution.”

“You must have been terrified.”

That was a mild way of putting it. She had never felt fear like that, not before and not since.

Instead of saying this to Kell, though, she made a dismissive wave of her hand. “Found myself in the Makell System.”

“That’s a rough solar system.” Surprise tightened his words. “Another place ‘liberated’ by PRAXIS, with predictably appalling results.”

“It was definitely different from palace life.” Understatement, again. The anarchy and brutality of the Makell System had burned lessons into her, lessons she could never forget. “I learned,

eventually. How to take care of myself. How to…protect myself.”

“Mara—” But she shook her head, determined to banish the memories of those horrible months, and what she’d had to endure. It had taken years before she could sleep with the lights off. “I talked my way onto a scavenger ship, becoming one of the crew. Eventually, I became owner and pilot of my own ship.” Thoughts of the Arcadia helped push away the memories, and she knew there was pride in her voice when she spoke of the ship. “It’s not a plush life.”

“But it’s yours. It all belongs to you, and only you. Your life, your ship.”

She did look at him then. He stared back, and the understanding in his dark eyes rocked her. No one had ever given her as much. She felt something inside her break and fall away. Leaving her open.

Raw. She could only manage a nod.

A wry smile shaped his mouth. “Expectations don’t last, not where we’re concerned.”

Oh, he had the truth of it. Neither of them who they were supposed to be. Exiled royalty turned scavenger and a former street brawler turned 8th Wing hero.

He rose up from the bed, sleek and strong. Their gazes held as he stripped out of his remaining clothes. She allowed herself the pleasure of looking at his nude body, the shapes and surfaces of his muscles, and the play of jewel-colored light over his skin. He was wondrous to look upon.

When he held out a hand, she could not refuse, and he gently pulled her up to standing.

He kept silent as he slowly, carefully began to remove her clothing. She started to help, but he shooed her hands away, so she could only stand, motionless, as he divested her of everything. He unbuckled her gauntlets and placed them on a nearby table. His long, blunt fingers undid her corset with surprising dexterity, and this, too, he placed on the table. The same for her blouse, her skirt, until she stood before him entirely nude, save for her boots.

She shook with desire.

He knelt before her and undid her boots, taking his time as each buckle slid free, his concentration total. Her heart threatened to tear from her body, to see this powerful warrior kneeling before her, tending to her so carefully, as if she was someone precious. Not a scavenger. Not a pawn.

A woman who deserved to be cherished.

It was all an illusion, she knew. The same illusion she’d felt briefly as they’d made love earlier.

Their time together was fleeting. If they survived this mission, they would never see each other again.

They were too different, their lives completely opposed. But for now, in this place, at this time, he gave her the momentary gift of being treasured.

At last, she was as naked as he. And he was as aroused as she, if the upright, thick stance of his cock was any indicator. Yet he did not take her back to the bed. Instead, he led her into the hygiene chamber, and she watched as he turned on the shower, adjusting the temperature until it met his standards.

He stepped into the shower and drew her in with him. “Let me clean you, princess.”

Water sluiced over their bodies. She did not know if her eyes clouded from the steam or something else, but she gave him a regal nod and he began.

He washed her thoroughly, tenderly, his big hands stroking over her slick body until she moaned.

He saw to himself with much more speed, clearly impatient to touch her again. As soon as he was satisfied with her cleanliness and his own, he shut off the shower and toweled them both off.

He adjusted the lights in the room to low, then led her back to the bed. Still, he spoke not a word, not even when he lay back and opened his arms to her. The silence felt deep, profound, and she preserved it. As silent as he, she came onto the bed and straddled him.

She held herself poised above him, the smooth, wide head of his cock just at her entrance. For a moment, they simply stared at one another, lost in each other’s eyes. Tension rolled from him, and she knew it took every microgram of his control to keep from surging up into her. Instead, he lay back, his hands on her waist, and waited.

If he had controlled their last bout of making love, this was hers to command. He was hers to command. A giddy, vast sensation that she prolonged as long as she could endure.

She could not endure much, wanting him too badly. She sank down onto him and gasped. He felt exactly right.

They went slowly, as slow as they had been fast before. Learning each other. Feeling the slide of skin to skin. His hardness. Her pliancy. Without intending to, their breathing synched, so they moaned together, drew air together. She felt herself floating, in her own orbit of sensation and pleasure.

This was new. This was different. She usually liked her sex fast and rough. Here, she and Kell created new worlds through deliberate, languorous movement. She wanted it to go on forever.

Her body had other demands. She could not stop herself from moving faster, taking him deeper and harder into her. His hips rose to meet hers, and his eyes closed as he became forged metal beneath her. Their gentle breaths changed to ragged panting.

She shifted so that her clit ground against him with each thrust. Fire shot through her, and then, arching back, she came in a dizzying, obliterating storm.

Groaning, he surged upward with his release. She watched him, feeling him empty into her, and through the haze of her own satiation, she saw that he was tough and beautiful.

They fell asleep this way, with her atop him, his body still within hers. Peace and safety cloaked them. Yet here was another illusion. Everything was danger, chance—the mission, the feelings between her and Kell. Questions and risks. Sleep was a temporary balm, yet nothing could ever truly withstand the perilous uncertainty that loomed like encroaching shadow.