Garnets or Bust

Chapter One

Year 5, Saurellian Calendar Daaron crept up to the edge of the hillside on his belly, raising the scope of his rifle to his eyes, finger light on the trigger. The small figure of a woman came into focus and his breath hissed inward. He recognized her.

Tessa Marasdottir.

Fuck.

Of all the people in the damn Empire to find the garnet deposits, why the hell her?

Tessa’s tiny form hunched over an ore processor, and from the excited tension she radiated he knew she’d struck pay dirt. She’d discovered cerulean star garnets, which just happened to be the new Emperor’s favorite gemstone. Before today, they could only be found on one planet in the entire Empire.

The damn things would be worth a fortune, a dream come true for Tessa. Now Daaron’s job was to kill that dream. By all rights he should kill Tessa too. He sighed heavily and raised one hand to signal his men to hold their fire. He just couldn’t bring himself to do it, not yet.

Tessa dropped something, falling to her knees and reaching under the processing platform to find it. The position pulled her sturdy work pants tight against her butt and Daaron’s breath caught on a surge of lust. He’d wanted to get his hands on that ass for years, ever since the first time he’d seen her at university. She had a tight, compact little body just soft and round enough to give a man all kinds of ideas—mostly about plowing her until she screamed for mercy. His cock stirred, prodding the ground painfully, which also brought back memories. No woman had turned him down before or since, yet he’d spent two years lusting after Tessa without so much as a kiss, let alone the long hard screw he needed.

Nope, she’d protected her virtue against every type of assault, from his first gentle attempts to flirt to his final humiliating offers of money.

Daaron lifted his pelvis, adjusting himself awkwardly, but the brief touch of his hand brushing his stubborn prick just made things worse. Trying to ignore his arousal, he studied her carefully through the scope. Long, reddish braids still swung down her back, reaching all the way to her knees. He hated those braids. A proud symbol of her purity and unwed state, they were the crowning glory for any girl raised in the Warrens of Tyre. Why a people would refuse to allow their women to have sex outside marriage was beyond him, but that stubborn, lower-class morality had kept her out of his bed.

He would have given her anything, yet she rejected him.

As he watched, Tessa stood and turned toward him, reaching both hands down to the small of her back, stretching. High, pointed breasts poked forward. Taunting him.

He’d never seen them naked, but he’d watched her working out at the pool more than once. Her bathing suit, while modest, still left little to the imagination. He wanted to lick those nipples, suck on them while he thrust his fingers right into her cunt. Virgin territory, so tight it would hurt. Daaron reached down again, unable to resist gripping his cock as she turned away from him. His hips thrust down involuntarily, need hardening his thighs.

How could he kill Tessa? She’d fought so hard to make her way in the world, rising above her birth to escape the Warrens and build a life for herself. And what a waste of a beautiful woman that would be… Daaron forced himself to pull his hand away from his crotch as a solution came to him.

Maybe he wouldn’t have to kill her after all.

*** Tessa sat next to her fire in the cool evening air, studying an ancient colonial survey on her tablet. The brightly lit screen scrolled by quickly, dancing across the caparison data gleaned from fifteen core samples she’d taken earlier in the day. The last had been the best—who could have dreamed that she’d find a cerulean star garnet as big as her eye in a frigging core sample? Stuff like that never happened in the real world, and certainly not to Tessa.

As she read the analysis of her other findings, her ore processor chugged away quietly behind her. Occasionally it gave a little ping, setting her heart pounding. Each ping meant another garnet. She already had enough that she’d never have to work again, and that was without excavating at all. When she’d been assigned as a lowly clerk in the nearly defunct colonial geologic survey office she’d thought it was the worse thing that could have happened. Buried alive professionally, or so she’d been told.

Fuck that.

Tessa Marasdottir was about to rise from the dead. With this money she’d pay off her mother’s indenture and cover the immigration tax without even noticing. Within six months they’d be starting a new life in a new place. Hell, she might even be able to get married eventually, have kids.

Tonight her new life could begin.

Tessa flicked off the tablet and sat back in her camp chair, looking at the stars. Then she raised her glass of carefully hoarded Tyrian brandy and toasted herself.

“To the future,” she said, and drained it down.

“You got another cup?”

It took every bit of willpower Tessa had to hold her glass steady at the sound of that penetrating, hated voice.

Daaron Von Saur’rel.

Her eyes darted, searching for him, hunting him in the dim darkness beyond the reach of her fire. What the hell was he doing here? And more importantly, did he know about the garnets?

Daaron stepped into the circle of light. The bastard looked just like she remembered him, but different too. Still tall, with unruly dark hair that played around his head with a looseness that echoed his morals. Still that hideously beautiful face. Sculpted mouth and cheekbones, heavy-lidded eyes that belonged in the bedroom. A casually cruel mouth capable of flaying a classmate alive if they spoke out of turn or didn’t do their homework. Muscle-bound body, like a great ape.

But there were differences too. At university, he’d worn silken shirts that cost more than her mother’s indenture. Now he wore clothing that was still expensive but eminently more practical. She could tell even in the dim firelight that he had one of those fancy nano-shirts capable of shedding water, providing heat and even morphing shape as needed, the type used by the military. The same material in the form of pants cupped those lean hips she’d always tried so hard not to notice. She’d give anything to own a suit like that, far better than the cheap synth crap she wore.

And in his hand?

A blaster, pointed right at her.

“The old Daaron Von Saur’rel wouldn’t have let himself get this far from a luxury hotel and an entourage,” she said, sounding far cooler than she felt. “What brings you to my campsite?”

“The old Daaron Von Saur’rel is dead,” he replied, voice light but eyes deadly serious. “You still have your braids.”

She started, off guard.

“I am still unmarried,” she replied, choosing her words with great care. “That shouldn’t surprise you. I can only bring a man debt, not a dowry.”

“Doesn’t it seem a little old-fashioned to you?” he asked, his tone conversational, almost friendly. The gun wasn’t friendly at all.

“Our customs may seem strange to an aristocrat,” she replied, thinking rapidly.

Where was he going with this? “But they serve a valuable purpose for my people. Of course, we’ve had this conversation before. Without guns. I’m not going to change my mind about sleeping with you.”

“Having sex,” he corrected gently. “I wanted you to have sex with me. Sleep was always optional.”

He stepped farther into the light, and a crooked smile stole across his lips.

“You’re always cold, aren’t you, princess?” he asked. “Always high above us mortals?”

“Mortal?” she asked, her tone harsh and bitter. “You’ve never been mortal, Von Saur’rel. As far as I’m concerned, you aren’t even human.”

“You’re right about that,” he replied. “I stopped being human a long time ago. But probably not for the reasons you think. You were always too smart for your own good, Tessa. You’re lucky I happened to go out with the scouting party that followed you here. Otherwise you’d be dead by now. Instead, you have a choice.”

His words struck her hard. Followed her? How and why would Daaron Von Saur’rel be following anyone on this nearly empty planet in the back of beyond? And any choices Daaron might offer her wouldn’t be good; she knew that in her bones. He’d never made a secret of what he wanted from her. Sex. In her darkest moments she could even admit that she’d wanted him too. Every girl in their class had, and a good many more than that. He’d worked his way through more of them than should have been possible.

But how had he found her in the first place?

He strode into the firelight, eyes holding hers, blaster steady. He held it low, near to his hips, drawing her eyes toward that part of his body she always pretended didn’t exist. Dear Goddess, she could see his erection from here. Answering heat flickered to life in her own groin, he’d always done that to her. She cursed her response even as her mind raced. He’d followed her. Did he know about the garnets? How long had he been watching? Could she strike a deal with him? There were enough riches for both of them.

Although with his family, he didn’t need riches, something she’d been all too aware of at school. He’d been a frequent customer at the bar where she’d worked, spending more credits in a night that she’d earn in a month. A year.

Money couldn’t motivate Daaron Von Saur’rel.

He pointed with the tip of his blaster toward her tent.

“It looked to me earlier like you’d found something,” he said. “I’m assuming garnets?”

“How did you know?” she asked. “I sorted through thousands of planetary surveys to find them, records that nobody had accessed for generations. They’re mine.”

“I can’t let you keep them,” he said, and for one second she could have sworn there was compassion in his eyes. “You don’t want me to explain all the reasons why, trust me.”

She nodded toward the blaster.

“Are you going to kill me?” she asked. “Because unless you plan to do it, get out of my campsite. I don’t want you here, and I won’t let you get in the way of my plans. You may not have ever had to do anything more important than find exactly the right suit for an Imperial ball, but I have commitments. To my mother. She sacrificed everything to give me my education, and this is my chance to pay her back. Surely you can understand that?”

He nodded his head, surprising her.

“Actually, I can.”

He leaned one hip against her camp table, ignoring the careful piles of flimsies he crushed. She gritted her teeth—same old Daaron, oblivious to other people’s hard work.

She stood slowly, eyeing the blaster as she set down her glass. Then she took a careful step toward him.

“Please don’t touch my papers,” she said, doing her best to maintain her dignity.

She remembered him leaning that same way against her lab bench at university, tempting her with delights she couldn’t allow herself to contemplate.

Daughters of bond servants can’t afford relationships with aristocrats, not if they want to stay honorable. And Tessa was always honorable. Honor was the only inheritance her mother had given her, despite the fact that most nobles thought honor belonged to them alone. Stupid aristocrats with their duels. Daaron had fought three of them during those two years they’d studied together. Each time she’d been terrified for his life. But Daaron simply laughed at danger. To him, life was nothing more than a game. Still, she wondered if playing on the ancient aristocratic code might work in this circumstance…

“I found this claim fairly, using open records and my own intellect,” she said, walking toward him slowly and steadily. “When I sunk those core samples, I staked a claim that will hold up in Imperial court. You need to leave or you’ll be dishonoring me, not to mention opening yourself up to liability.”

He laughed, relaxing his grip on the blaster.

“I don’t give a damn about your claim,” he said. “And to be honest, honor doesn’t come into it. The Code wasn’t written for people like you. The Imperial officials would laugh in your face if you challenged me.”

Tessa froze. She’d always known he considered her inferior, but he’d never spoken so baldly. It hurt more than she’d realized.

“But this isn’t about the garnets,” he continued. “I don’t give a damn about money.

I have more than I need. This is more important than money, more important than our pathetic little lives put together. If you discover a new source of cerulean star garnets this planet will be crawling with speculators. Even worse, a consortium will eventually come in and strip mine. I can’t allow that to happen.”

“Why do you care?” she asked, genuinely puzzled. “We’re in the middle of nowhere, I don’t even understand why anybody settled here. It’s not an environmental preserve, not even ecologically unique. I checked. There is nothing special about this planet, it’s not even very good for farming, Goddess help those poor settlers who are trying. The spaceport looks like it might shut down any day from lack of use. Why are you determined to destroy this for me?”

“Come here and I’ll tell you,” he said. His eyes bore into hers, and for a moment she froze, mesmerized. What was it about him that called to her? Sure, he was handsome and sexy. He had power. But Daaron Von Saur’rel stood forever beyond her reach. Only a fool would hope for anything from him.

“Come here and kiss me,” he said, voice hoarse. She licked her lips nervously, drawing his eyes. Their heat burned her. He flicked off the blaster and put it in the holster hanging low on a belt across his hips.

Tessa stepped closer. She wanted to be near him, wanted to smell his scent.

He leaned his head down and sniffed at her neck, giving a low groan.

“So sweet,” he whispered, the breath of air touching her skin and sending ripples of sensation through her body. “Let me taste you, Tess.”

She nodded her head, incapable of disagreeing.

He reached a hand around her neck, gripping her braids loosely and pulling her in for the kiss. His mouth opened over hers and she sank back into his touch. Finally. She’d wanted him so many times, had come close to doing this more than once. Each time she’d held back, knowing they could never be together. But now…this might be her last chance to get rid of him. She’d manipulate him, use her body to convince him to leave her alone.

It was bullshit. Tessa knew that. She kissed him because she wanted to, because he’d caught her off guard, threatening her shiny new future. If she was to lose everything, then couldn’t she at least have a little fun first?

She opened her mouth to Daaron, allowing his tongue to steal inside and caress her.

His lips were far softer than she’d ever imagined, the kiss gentle although far from sweet. Heat spilled from his mouth to hers. What would it feel like to take more of him into her body? They stood apart, touching where they kissed, but she’d seen that shocking erection earlier. He wanted her for more than kissing. Her tightening nipples and the tingles of sensation running between her legs told her she wanted more too.

Something tugged at her head, breaking the flow of the kiss. She tried to ignore it, tried to throw herself back into the flow of that gentle, beautiful caress. But the tugging continued, pulling at her and hurting. Suddenly her head felt incredibly light, and she pulled away from him with a cry of betrayal.

He looked down at her, his face a mixture of triumph and something else. In one hand he held a knife. Her braids dangled from the other.

“Daaron, what have you done?”