Captive of Pleasure; the Space Pirate's Woman (The LodeStar Series) (12 page)

He controlled the beings and the space around him—he knew it, and all who came in contact with him could not help but be aware as well.
 

He raised his brows at her, his eyes full of lazy amusement. Heat flooded her face as she realized she had been gaping at him like a child viewing a holovid.
 

“Please, I don’t know what to call you,” she said, scraping the lip of her mug with her thumbnail.
 

He paused, the second piece of bread almost to his lips. Then he smiled at her, his eyes twinkling in a way that sent alarm skittering down her spine.

“Tell you what, my Zaë. When we’re with the others, you call me Stark. But when we’re alone, just the two of us?” his voice dropped to a confidential murmur. “You call me ‘Master’.”

Her spine snapped straight and she stared. He was teasing her, wasn’t he?
 

“I’m sure that’s not...” She spluttered to a halt as he leaned in, his gaze narrowed to spear straight inside her.
 

“I bought you.” His shrug was apologetic, as if he understood but couldn’t change the situation. “That makes it pretty clear in my mind.”

Since he was now only inches away, his long hair swinging forward over his shoulder, Zaë sat speechless. She couldn’t be certain if he was serious.
 

Then she inhaled, taking in his scent, the one she awakened to, but now with an added muskiness—
sex
. Layered with another woman’s perfume. She wrinkled her nose.

She didn’t like that woman’s scent on him, but at the same time her body clenched low and sweet again. Longing. She wanted—she didn’t know what she wanted. First, to shove him into his showerdry and wash him all over with her own hands, until that other woman’s scent was gone and nothing remained but him, the way it had when she’d awakened in his arms.
 

But that wasn’t going to happen, and she must do whatever it took to placate him. If he sent her away...that didn’t bear thinking about.

She lowered her gaze and moved away from him, scooting back on her stool. “Whatever you wish...Master.”

He chuckled. “See, that wasn’t so hard, bunny.”

Resentment seething through her, she moved farther back and then gave a squawk as she overbalanced on the back of the stool.

He caught her, one powerful hand grasping her arm. She landed forward over the counter, her hair spilling over his hand and forearm.

He stood still, and she peeped up to see him gazing down at the tumbled blond curls layered over his brown skin. Then he turned his hand to let her hair slide across his palm and rubbed the end of one lock between his thumb and forefinger before letting go.
 

“Braid that before you leave my tont,” he ordered. “You don’t go out with it loose.”
 

When she said nothing, baffled, he looked up, arching one heavy brow at her. “Understand?”

Zaë nodded her acquiescence. Perhaps feminine hair-binding was a custom of his tribe. Although he did not seem like any simple tribesman she’d ever met.
 

At the instant pain this thought engendered, she winced, and focused her mind on watching him saunter away toward the showerdry. Even clothed, his ass was very fine, and those long, muscular legs were made for fitted leggings.
 

He turned back at the last instant and cast a disparaging look down over her form. “Don’t want to see you in that color again, either. Looks like something that ought to be in a breakfast bowl, not on a pretty woman. You’ll wear blue.”

She would?
 

“What do you say?” he called back

“Yes…Master.” Zaë made a face at the empty door, her fingers curled into the soft fabric of her top. Then she looked down at herself and frowned. He was right; it was an awful color—as bland as the crumbs remaining on the serving plate. Blue...she would like that. Although she didn’t know where she was supposed to get blue clothing. Was there a shopping center nearby?

Nera reappeared, to put away the breakfast things, although not before urging Zaë to eat another piece of the breakfast bread and drink the last of the fruit and yogurt.
 

Zaë obeyed, because after being treated worse than a beast by the slavers, it was very nice to be fussed over.
 

“I am supposed to obtain clothing,” she told Nera, licking the last of her drink from her lips. “But I don’t know where or how.”

Nera’s eyes brightened. “Clothing? There is a supply transport due in tomorrow. They always have a selection of items, and we can place orders too. We do our purchasing via holovid, then they bring it.”

Zaë listened politely, an idea brewing that was at once exciting and frightening. If the transports brought goods in, perhaps they could also take beings, away. Back where they belonged.

If only she knew where that was.

Chapter 8

As Qala stalked away from Joran’s tent, resentment twisting inside her, her comlink chimed.

“What?” she snapped.

“I’m waiting for you,” Marzolle said in her husky voice. “That’s what.”

Qala stopped in the narrow space between a tont and a large rock. “Busy.”

Marzolle made a soft sound of amusement. “I smell like him,” she whispered in Qala’s ear. “I have his seed in me.”

Heat roared over Qala’s skin and her nipples tightened to painful points under her soft shirt, her pussy spasming. She closed her eyes and gave in with a quiet groan. “Okay. I’m...right outside.”

She turned and walked across the path. She passed one of the younger men leading a catamount pony and nodded without really seeing him.

Marzolle whisked the door open and Qala slipped inside.
 

“Get your clothes off,” Marzolle ordered, hands on her hips. “I want you naked.”

Without a word, her steady hands and unsmiling gaze belying the tumult of desire inside her, Qala obeyed. Marzolle lay back on her tumbled bed and watched.

“My lovely warrior girl,” she crooned. “So slim and strong, with your pretty little breasts and that lovely red thatch.”

She stroked her hand between her legs and played with her own wetness. “Do you want me?”

“You know I do,” Qala muttered, crawling across the bed to her. Her mouth watered as Marzolle’s fragrance rose, mingled with spicy perfume she loved and with the musky scent of sex—Marzolle’s own arousal and a man’s semen.
 

And not just any man’s, the one man Qala wanted and couldn’t have.

“Kiss me,” Marzolle commanded.

Qala leaned down to her and cocked her head to kiss the other woman. So soft, everything about her was so different than a man’s hardness. She licked her tongue into Marzolle’s mouth, shuddering with pleasure-pain as she tasted Stark on her.

Marzolle broke the kiss first, licking at Qala’s chin and then nipping her. “Now eat me and I’ll tell you what he did to me, and what I did to him.”

Afterward, as Qala sat on the edge of the bed, pulling her boots back on, Marzolle reached out to tuck Qala’s shirt more neatly into the back of her belt. Her touch lingered.

“Turn,” she ordered. “Let me fix your hair.”

Qala sat obediently as Marzolle finger-combed her tousled hair. She didn’t much care what it looked like, but she sort of liked being fussed over.

Finished, Marzolle smiled at her and stroked her cheek. “We could share another man, you know. For real, I mean. One who would enjoy it, not hold himself apart like our captain.”

Qala shook her head. Her body was sated, her mind the usual tumble of shame and pleasure after one of these encounters. She was like a beggar, taking crumbs when she wasn’t allowed at the table. “And who would that be?”

“Haro.”

Qala flew off the bed. “Oh, seven hells, no.” Haro’s sly grin filled her mind and she shuddered. “He’d never let me hear the end of it—and probably everyone else, too.”

So even if she were tempted, which she was not, no way. Haro was a wild-ass cruiser pilot with a big mouth.

Marzolle gave her a knowing smile. “That man is crazy for a taste of you. And I can tell you he’s worth trying. He
always
makes it good for a lady.”

“And how would you know about that? That he’s supposedly crazy for me, I mean?” Not that she cared. He wasn’t the man she craved.
 

Smoothing her vest, Qala felt a lump in her pocket. She reached inside, found the bauble she’d purchased at one of the booths set up at the auction, and flipped it through the air. It landed on Marzolle’s rounded belly.
 

Marzolle picked it up and then laughed. Qala grinned with her. It was a bracelet, the clasp a detailed rendering of a woman bending over to take a man’s exaggerated cock.
 

“I’ll treasure this forever,” Marzolle said, batting her thick lashes. “And for the gift, I’ll tell you how I know Haro wants you—because he told me. Men whisper to me of strange things as they lie in my arms afterward, and it’s generally truth. Except for Stark, of course. He gives nothing away.”

Reeling from the knowledge that all of Haro’s teasing of her wasn’t just teasing—unless of course this was just taking it one step further to convince her before he laughed in her face...

Qala shook her head impatiently.

“I don’t have time for this,” she said, more to herself than Marzolle. “Got things to do.”

“As do I,” Marzolle purred. “Or should I say, people to do.” She waggled her brows at Qala, who couldn’t help laughing. She knew very well Marzolle made jewelry for a living. She had sex because she enjoyed it and lived with Stark’s band because she liked the freedom.

Qala was still smiling as she stepped out into the morning.

Where of course the first person she saw was her nemesis, strolling along the path, dressed for the day in his usual leather leggings and vest over soft pants and snug tee. The sun glinted off Haro’s wild hair like it did on the wings of her little cruiser.
 

And in the morning sunlight, his brown eyes were the same hue as the chunks of chocolate in the crispies she loved. Right now they were dark with some suppressed emotion, but not laughter.

Uncomfortable under the weight of that stare, she braced herself for a snarky comment about where she’d been. To her shock, he didn’t even smile. “Morning, Qala. Ready to face the IGSF?”

Qala fell into step with him. “Gah, ready as I’ll ever be, I s’pose.”

He glanced down at her, then away, his nostrils twitching. Right, she probably smelled of sex. Her cheeks heated. “You reckon they can really give us trouble over this one?”

“I do. Oh, I’d love to get Cerul alone in a dark place somewhere.”

“She’s a stone-cold bitch,” Haro agreed. “Best remember, though, she’s Indigon. She could twist you up in a knot before you got in a single blow.”

Qala shuddered. “True. Wish I had some of those powers.”

They’d reached Joran’s tont. She reached for the door flap.
 

“Way I hear it,” Haro said in her ear, “you have powers all right, to bring a being to his knees and keep him—or her—there.”

So much for any truce. She drove her elbow back in a short, hard arc, catching him in the ribs.

He gave an ‘
oof
’ of pain, but when she glared at him over her shoulder, he was grinning at her. Only the glitter in his eyes, again, wasn’t laughter. She looked away, almost afraid to know.

“Get in,” Joran ordered, and Qala moved, forgetting Haro, Marzolle and everything else but the man she would follow anywhere. And do anything for, if only he would let her.
 

***

Commander Aqa Cerul wasted no time getting to the point of her holovid conference with Joran.

Seated in a throne-like chair of pale cerametal, head held high, she looked like a queen granting an audience. Against the dark blue of her IGSF uniform with all its epaulets and markings of rank, her pale skin, ink-black hair and hypnotic blue gaze marked her as an Indigon, as did the arrogance stamped on her narrow face.

She eyed Joran and his crew leaders with something like excitement flickering in her icy gaze.
 

“Mr. Stark,” she said. “Or should I say, ‘Il Zhazid’?”

He shrugged, leaning back in his chair with his legs sprawled out, arms draped over the comfortable armrests. “You can call me either, Cerul.”
 

“That’s Commander Cerul to you,” snapped the male IGSF officer standing at attention to one side of the tont.
 

“She’s your commander, not ours,” Haro drawled from behind Joran.
 

Joran’s lips tipped up with approval. Be damned to every one of the seven hells before he’d call her commander of anything. But she did command a large force of seasoned and extremely well-armed soldiers who’d been tasked with enforcing the peace and law of this planet and its surrounding space, so he had to listen to her.

“Thank you, Sergeant Arc,” Cerul said. “But don’t waste your time trying to bring any semblance of respect from this motley crew. I’ll settle for their obedience.”