Thief (15 page)

Her jaw damn near hit the floor.

Jace took a perverse delight in shocking her, and her dismay made him even more determined to make her back down this time. Even if he had to say the most vulgar things in the Void, he would force her retreat.

“I can’t believe you’re surprised.” He stroked her lips with a forceful fingertip. “You can read me so well, right?”

She darted her gaze to the floor. “I told you, I can’t read you like that. I can read—”

Plush lips gave way below the thrust of his silencing finger. When her hungry eyes met his, he said, “Don’t try to distract me. I don’t care what you can read. You don’t have to read me. I’ll tell you what I want.”

Lowering his mouth to her neck, he nipped lightly. “I want you.” After pulling her mocha skin, marking her, he lifted his mouth to her ear. “I want you writhing and panting and sweating below my thrusting body.”

She placed her large hands on his chest, pushed him back and looked him right in the eye. The depths of her black gaze swarmed with heat, smoky and slightly unfocused. “You want me by force?”

He heard the catch in her voice and sensed her desperation. He smiled at her as he answered her question with one of his own. “How can I force you when sex is part of your contract, my lovely cook-whore?”

Kraft withdrew with a startled step back. She pressed against the metal door of his bunk and flattened her palms against the smooth durosteel to steady herself.

Closing in on her, he took a half-step forward and placed his palms on the door, encasing her with his arms. In a tingling rush, a fleeting ripple washed over his body, and he wondered if he could actually feel Kraft trying to read him through the door. He forced himself to contain the rush by focusing his mind and constricting his body to a tense stance.

Kraft stood taller. Confusion and fear darted across her expressive face. He wondered if the darkness in him caused her reaction, or if he’d succeeded in preventing her from reading him. Either way, he sensed his advantage.

Pressing his mouth to her ear, he whispered, “What’s wrong, sugar-britches? I thought you were all for this kind of dance between us, especially after what you said in the cargo bay.”

With her back to his bunk door, she lifted her face and the whole of her body until she met his gaze with level intensity. Since she couldn’t force him to retreat verbally, she now tried to force his retreat with the fierceness of her gaze, and it almost worked.

He fought down the urge to step back by moving closer. She radiated the scents of cooking, but below, he found that enticing hint of her musky perfume. Her scent was rich, intoxicating and alluring. He wanted to find the source of her fragrance and lose himself in it.

“Just give me the order, Captain Lawless, and I’ll ride you until we both collapse.”

One fleeting vision of her proudly riding astride him caused him to blush and turn away. The triumphant look on her face clarified she thought such a command a distinct impossibility.

She seemed pleased that she’d finally forced him to back down. He watched Kraft’s pulse jump below the smooth skin of her neck when he closed in on her and said, “That’s an order I’m not likely to give.”

Her lips parted in surprise. She lowered her face but not her gaze.

“I wouldn’t order you to ride me because I like to be on top.”

He forced her chin up so their lips came close without touching. “Stop giving me that submissive face when you’ve got nothing behind it but arrogance.”

Kraft stood tall. “I thought you preferred submissive women?”

“As a matter of fact I do.” Tracing his finger along the open V of her shirt, he smoothed the fabric against the curve of her breasts and popped open one of the small wooden buttons. “Do you like submissive men?”

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, but it caught in her throat. When he looked down, he discovered her nipples were pressed tight against the soft yellow fabric of his old shirt.

He chuckled and stroked the barest brush of his fingertip over the swell of her nipple. “Obviously not.”

Pulling back, Kraft lifted hungry eyes. “Are you taking me to your bed, or are you planning to fuck me in the hallway?”

The vulgarity hit him like a cold water slap, but he would not retreat. “Don’t swear at me. I don’t like it.” For a brief moment, he almost told her to go. This had gone far enough, and no matter what darkness filled him, he could not command her to his bunk. Once behind that closed door, all his self-control would vanish in a consuming fire of need, but he had yet to taste her mouth. More than anything, he did not want this moment with her to end until he’d kissed her.

Coldly, he said, “I prefer a wife in my bed. Seems to me I should take my whore in the kitchen.” He inclined his head toward the galley doorway.

With a dismissive lift of her chin, Kraft strode into the darkened galley. He followed, his gaze riveted on the sway of her fanny below the soft homespun of his secondhand trousers.

The luscious scent of dinner still wafted through the silent kitchen. Jace turned the lights low. With his hands to her hips, he lifted her to the counter, placing her below that oddly misplaced window in the ceiling.

“Rather dangerous place for a tryst.” She pressed her legs together. “Anyone could walk in.”

“It’s late, and everyone is in bed.” Running his hands up her thighs, he gently forced them apart. “If anyone interrupts, I’ll just order them to leave. That’s one of the benefits of being the captain—I get to order everyone around.” He stepped between her parted legs and settled his hands on her hips.

Kraft sat very still, as if waiting for him to pull her forward, so he didn’t. The anticipation of feeling her fully pressed to him was intoxicating enough. Just the thought of possessing her made him strain against the front of his trousers.

Along with swirling desire, a fear trickled down his spine like rainwater. He’d already gone too far to back down without losing face, and a deep masculine pleasure filled him when he thought about commanding a woman far stronger than himself. He wanted to know if Kraft would let him or fight him. Adrenaline surged with the thought he might very well die for his perverse curiosity.

“There’s a dark streak in you, Captain Lawless. You want your crew to see us like this.” Kraft placed her hand to his chest and toyed with the black hairs that peeked from below his shirt. “You want them to know that you took me down a peg by making me submit to you.”

“Perhaps.” He tightened his grip on her hips. “But then again, I don’t really care what they think.”

“Yes, you do.” She lifted one brow as she popped open the top button of his shirt. “I usurped your authority today. You’re doing this to reclaim your power.”

Her insight into his motivations clarified that she could still read him on some level, but he refused to back down until he had tasted her. Once he knew the full of her mouth, he would never touch her again.

“Maybe this is the only way to make you understand that I’m in charge of this ship, and everyone on it, including you.” He leaned close to kiss her, but she turned her head away before he could. Confusion washed over him. She seemed willing to let him touch her, but she would not kiss him, and he wondered why. Was all her pointed flirting just an act?

“I’m not disputing your authority, Captain. You don’t have to do this in order to discipline me.”

“You make it sound like I’m going to turn you over my knee and paddle your butt.” He paused. “Not that it isn’t an intriguing idea.”

Fury drew her brows low. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Keep defying me, and I might.” With an insistent stroke of his fingertip, he pushed the V of her shirt apart until he exposed the inner curves of her breasts. Her soft skin melted under his touch. She arched back with a sigh of encouragement.

“Captain—”

“Silence.”

Harsh and impatient, the command rushed from his mouth. Using the length of her bound hair, he pulled gently until he exposed her neck, making her vulnerable to him. He nipped her flesh as his voice shook a tremble in her body.

“If I want you to speak, I’ll tell you what to say.”

She tensed, and he thought he’d finally pushed her too far, but then she gripped his shoulders, encouraging him.

He kissed the space between her breasts as he worked the small wooden buttons of her shirt apart. Pounding blood coursed through him and echoed her pulse. Lips pressed to her flesh felt each push of her heart mimic his. He cupped her breasts through the worn yellow shirt, and her nipples tightened below his fingers.

She leaned back, balancing herself on one hand against the counter. With a soft moan, she cupped his head, trying to draw his mouth to her breast, but he refused and continued to tease the inner curves with his lips and tongue. She uttered a groan of frustration that became a gasp of surprise when he gripped her hips and pulled her tight against him.

Her heat burned through his trousers, arousing him beyond rational thought. Jace felt drugged yet alert. Digging his fingers into the flesh of her bottom, he held her still as he stroked slowly against the center of her spread legs.

Ten years of painful, lonely celibacy turned his gentle thrusts to gripping intensity. Losing control, Jace uttered her name with a breathless plea. He wanted her, all of her, here and now. He didn’t care if a member of the crew entered the galley. In his current condition, he didn’t think he would notice. Nothing existed for him but Kraft. The intoxicating pleasure of riding his swelling need against the slick moist heat of her trapped behind his castoff trousers rendered him an animal. He damned himself to the hot place for what he was doing, then damn himself even more for not insisting she wear a skirt.

Blind with passion, Jace pushed aside Kraft’s shirt, lowered his head to her breast and took her swollen toffee peak into his mouth. He rasped his tongue and the sharp hairs of his new beard against the sensitive bud of her swelling breast.

Yanking her shirt from her pants, Kraft pulled it off and flung it away. She angled him to her other breast with a guttural command in a language he didn’t understand, but he didn’t need to.

Lifting and pressing her breasts together, he used his rough beard, his lips, his teeth, his tongue and his softly twisting fingers to provide the pleasure she sought. He pulled away and discovered her eyes closed, her head moving side to side, and her breath catching and releasing with delirious need. He cupped her beautiful bare breasts with his hands and firmly twisted her nipples between his fingers and thumbs.

With a startled gasp, she drew close and wrapped her legs around his hips. She lowered her hands to grip the tense muscles of his buttocks. Arms and legs working in tandem, Kraft crushed him against her so tightly he could barely move.

The power of her body, the painful press of his need, the passion of her embrace, compelled Jace to lift her from the countertop and plaster her against the thrust of his body.

Kraft curled around him, embracing him with strong arms and solid thighs. Only layers of clothes separated them. Even though she was heavy, adrenaline and lust filled him with power. Kraft felt feather-light in his arms.

He lifted his mouth to her ear, and she lowered her mouth to his. Panting, gasping, he was inflamed by the feel of her moist breath against his neck and ear. The moist heat below, rocking, twisting, crushing against him, almost brought him to climax.

When she lifted her hands and entwined them in his hair, he wrapped his arms around her, clutched her bottom and buried his face against her neck. At first, he nibbled and chewed the tender skin of her throat, but her groaning compelled him to bite harder. He knew he marked her, but he didn’t care. Jace wanted to mark Kraft as his own. He wanted to claim her. He wanted to kill any man who even thought of touching her. She belonged to him and he would never let her go.

Lowering her to the countertop, he leaned back enough to let the buttons on his fly ride against her. Kraft uttered gasps of increasing pleasure. With a few more strokes, he feared they both would climax.

“Kraft, tell me to stop.”

“No.”

She wrapped her legs even tighter around him and encouraged him to continue rocking against her.

More than anything, he wanted to taste her mouth. He would not let her deny him this time. He angled away and grasped her shoulders to pull her close and force her to accept his lips against hers. He would penetrate her mouth then rip off her pants and know the full of her body right here in the kitchen.

When his hands gripped her, Kraft uttered a fractured gasp of pain and reeled back. Shoving his right hand away, she clutched her upper left arm.

“What—” He stepped back and looked down at his hand. With a wince, all his desire abruptly left him. “I’m sorry, I—”

Eyes wide with shock and pain, she looked slapped awake from a beautiful dream. She shook her head. Her baffled gaze darted away from him as she climbed off the counter. Her legs trembled as she retrieved her shirt, clutched it to her chest and then stumbled to the short kitchen doorway.

One shaking hand clutched the doorframe for support. Her other hand, her left, clenched to a fist. Blood oozed in sluggish drops to the floor. After a deep, gasping breath, she recovered and exited the kitchen without turning back.

Jace watched her go and now understood the darkness in him that pushed her away. His aggressive, possessive passion was his darkness. In that moment, he hadn’t cared if he hurt her, or if she wanted to kiss him. He intended to force her by grasping her shoulders hard enough to reopen the gunshot wound.

He washed her blood from his palm and knew he could never face her again.

Chapter Fifteen

Kraft wasn’t surprised when Jace didn’t come to the galley for breakfast. She was even less surprised when Jace ordered Bailey to bring his meal to the bridge.

“Why does Captain Lawless want to land on Dahank?” Bailey frowned at the plate she handed to him. “I’ve done it a million times.”

Kraft knew why Jace wanted to stay on the bridge, but she kept her voice casual. “Practice, maybe?” She shrugged. The movement caused Jace’s secondhand shirt to smooth over her shoulders and stroke her breasts and belly. The shirt smelled of harsh hand soap, but it was clean and stitched. Only a fading maroon swath marked the bullet wound below.