Virgin (2 page)

Dax was still smiling when he said it, his eyes drinking in the sight of her. Her small stature fascinated him, but exploring her scent would have to wait. Dax hadn’t had a chance to draw another breath before he was rudely interrupted by a powerful-looking man with short, bristly blond hair who shouted at him from across the room.

“You quit looking at her like that! She’s
my
woman!”

Dax stared back at the man, feeling his desires sink to his toes. He might have been a Zetithian, with a full measure of the attractiveness to women that most of his kind possessed, but this guy wasn’t bad-looking either, and if Ava was already taken, there was no more to be said. Dax’s home planet of Zetith had been blown to bits because of one jealous man; thinking that there were no others in the galaxy was shortsighted in the extreme. The fellow looked Terran, but given the size of him, there might have been something else thrown into the mix. “Don’t want her, pal,” Dax insisted, trying hard to keep his expression neutral. “She’s all yours.” Dax had the misfortune of seeing Ava wince as he said this and immediately wished he’d kept his mouth shut.

“Please, Lars!” she said. “He’s a customer…”

“I’ve heard about you fuckin’ Zetithians!” Lars shouted back, his speech slurred with liquor. “Damn cat-boys! All you have to do is purr, and the women come running. Wish the Nedwuts had killed the whole fuckin’ lot of you!”

Dax knew he could handle the situation, but he also knew that it would be difficult to keep Jack from butting in. She’d been killing Nedwuts to protect her husband for so long that anytime a Zetithian was threatened, her hand automatically slid to the pulse pistol strapped to her thigh—which it was doing right now.

“I’m not purring,” Dax said evenly. “And I’m not going to. Don’t worry about it.”

“You wanna fight, pretty boy?” Lars stood abruptly, his barstool hitting the floor with a loud clang. If anyone in the bar had been ignorant of the exchange, they certainly weren’t now.

“Not particularly,” Dax replied. Ava returned and set the bottle of ale on the table. It took every ounce of willpower Dax possessed to keep from grabbing her hand and making a run for it.

Jack paid for the drink without comment and watched as Ava went over to Lars, hopefully to talk some sense into him.

“You keep hanging out in places like this and shit like that will happen,” Jack said quietly. “Trust me, I know. You’re gonna get yourself killed if you keep this up.”

“I doubt it,” said Dax. “Guys like that are mostly hot air anyway.”

“Maybe, but you got that poor little waitress in trouble, and all you did was order a drink. I’ll bet that asshole beats the shit out of her as soon as she gets off work.”

Dax threw up his hands. “What do you want me to do, Jack? Crawl in a hole and hide? I can’t help being what I am.”

“No, but—” Nodding toward the door, she added, “Look, they’re leaving together.”

“And I hope they’ll be very happy,” Dax said, surprised he didn’t choke on the words. “But it’s none of my business—or yours.”

Jack gave him a wry smile. “Been hearing that all my life.”

“Never stopped you, did it?”

“Nope. And it probably never will.” Getting to her feet, she gave Dax a pat on the head. “Gotta get back to the ship now. Take care of yourself, big guy.”

“I’ll do that.”

Jack threaded her way between the tables as numerous eyes followed her. She might have been tough as nails, but she was still a good-looking woman. A Nedwut approached the open doorway, and, in an instant, Jack’s pistol was in her hand. Not needing any further discouragement, the hairy beast took off running.

“Sorry,” she said over her shoulder to no one in particular. “Force of habit.” With a grin that wasn’t the slightest bit apologetic, she holstered her weapon and left the bar.

Waroun must have been watching for Jack’s departure, for he left his dark corner to take the seat she had just vacated.

“So, how’s Jack?”

“Just fine,” Dax replied, taking a sip of his ale.

“Still hate Norludians?”

Dax shrugged. “Yeah. Don’t think she’ll ever change her mind about that.”

“She might change her mind if she’d ever actually have sex with one of us,” Waroun said with a smirk. “You Zetithians may have fancy cocks, but it’s not the meat, it’s the motion, my friend.”

Dax stifled a laugh. “I’m sure it is.”

Waroun snorted. “Like you’d know. You’ve never been kissed, let alone fucked.”

“Drop it, Waroun,” Dax warned. “You know very well why I—”

“Tell every woman who wants you that she’ll have to fuck me first? So you won’t—what was it you said?—‘ensnare unsuspecting women with your potent sexual prowess’?”

“I never said that!”

Waroun waved a dismissive hand. “Words to that effect. You
know
what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know. Just give me a break. I get enough of that shit from Jack.”

“Yes, but she means well.”

Dax looked at his friend in surprise. “Since when do you go around defending Jack?”

“Maybe because she’s right,” Waroun replied. His bulbous eyes shone brightly in the dimly lit bar, making his appearance even more bizarre than usual. “Your bloodline is important. It wouldn’t kill you to donate to a sperm bank, you know—and one of these days, someone else just might—kill you, I mean.”

“Someone like Lars?” Dax suggested.

“Wouldn’t be the first man to be jealous of you,” Waroun said promptly. “And probably won’t be the last. A little insurance might be a good thing.”

“Oh, so now you’re the voice of reason.”

Waroun shrugged. “I know what I see, my friend, and you are a powerful woman magnet. The fact that I’m so repellent might not keep them away forever. That waitress was looking at you, you know. I was watching her.”

“Waitresses
should
be attentive to their customers,” Dax protested, not daring to hope that his interest was returned. “Can I help it if she’s good at what she does?”

Waroun’s lower lip protruded until it turned inside out. He obviously didn’t believe a word Dax was saying. “Get over it, Dax. Women want you. You should be thanking your lucky stars for that.”

Dax shook his head. “Can we talk about something else?”

Waroun laughed. “You mean like how that waitress asked me if we could take her to Aquerei?”

***

Ava had good reasons for wanting to leave Luxaria, and Lars wasn’t the only one. First of all, as a planet, Luxaria basically sucked. It was one of those colonies that had been established with no rules whatsoever—just the law of the gun and the credit. The best Ava could say about it was that everyone seemed to have agreed to use the Standard Tongue—or Stantongue, as it was often called—as the primary language. Lars had been so sure he could make a fortune there, but he’d yet to amass any amount of wealth, and it didn’t look like he was going to. Obviously, it took more smarts than Lars possessed for that.

Not that Ava cared for wealth, though it would have been nice to live on more than what her meager salary and tips could provide. Their living quarters were barely fit for animals, but she’d done her best. She couldn’t help it if Lars was a slob and kept mucking up the place. A few more slugs with a frying pan might have straightened him up eventually, but it was becoming increasingly apparent that his head was a lot stronger than her right arm. Maybe if she used both hands…

Ava stole a glance at Lars as they set off down the street. He’d been pugnacious enough while he was in the bar, but right now, it was all he could do to stand up. Bashing him over the head might not be necessary this time. “You know, you really didn’t have to try to pick a fight with that guy. He was just a customer.”

“A fuckin’
Zetithian
customer,” Lars grumbled. “I’ve heard about those guys. Women aren’t safe around them.”

Ava bit back a retort. Sometimes it was best not to argue. “I’ve seen them before, Lars. It was no big deal then, and it’s no big deal now.” Trag, the one other Zetithian she’d seen, had been nice enough, but this one was more intimidating than anything. His clothes were unremarkable—a white T-shirt, gray cargo pants, and black boots. She’d seen plenty of guys with tattoos and earrings; even the dreadlocks weren’t that unusual, but there was something about the hard glint in his eyes that made her shiver. He was incredibly handsome and had a wickedly sexy smile, but
still
…

“You were looking at him like you wanted to do him.”

Ava counted to three as she gazed heavenward.
God grant me the serenity…
“Lars, if I’d wanted to ‘do’ him, I would have let him beat you to a pulp, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

Lars staggered and nearly ran into a Scorillian family of three, which would probably have been the end of him. Grabbing his hand, she pulled him out of the way, all the while thinking she might have been saving herself a lot of trouble if she’d just let it happen. “You can’t leave me,” he mumbled. “It’s not safe.”

“That’s a matter of opinion,” Ava mocked. “I’m not what anyone would call ‘safe’ most of the time.”

“I’ve done my best… kept my part of the bargain.” Lars wiped his perpetually runny nose on his sleeve—one of his more endearing habits.

“There was never any bargain between us, Lars.”

Lars seemed to ignore this, still mumbling on like he hadn’t heard. “Made a deal.”

“With who? The devil? If you did, he got the best end of it. I came here, expecting something good to come of it, but so far, nothing has. And I’ve had enough of waiting tables and living in a dump and having to deal with your jealousy and drunkenness all the time. You damn near lost me my job just now, and then where would we be?” Shaking her head sadly, she added, “I ought never to have left Russ.”

“You know why you left him. He was boring.”

“Boring is better than a drunk who beats me up whenever he takes a notion.” She pointed sideways to a building even more dilapidated than the others on the street. “And you just passed up the flat.” She couldn’t bring herself to refer to it as a home or a house or anything of that nature. It was always referred to as “the” flat; there was no “our” about it.

“I said I was sorry for that.”

“What? Which part? Beating me up or passing up the flat?”

“Hurting you,” he replied. “Never meant to.”

“Yeah, that’s what they all say,” she grumbled as she unlocked the door. “Get on in here and try to sleep it off. I have to go back to work.”

Ava’s disillusionment with Lars had begun almost immediately, but he had assured her that they would be rolling in dough soon and then they would move on to live in one of Luxaria’s nicer regions. It hadn’t taken long for Ava to realize that Luxton City
was
Luxaria’s nicest region.

She sometimes suspected that Lars had been paid off by someone—a drug deal perhaps—because the trip to Luxaria had been expensive, and though they’d lived well enough in the beginning, their funds had quickly dwindled to the point that her waitressing job, which she’d taken purely for spending money at first, eventually became their primary source of income. For some strange reason, Lars seemed to think that getting an actual job was beneath his dignity, and since he tended to drink a lot and, she suspected, use a few illegal drugs, he didn’t contribute much to the family finances. Whatever the source of his funds had been in the beginning, it had now dried up completely. Ava had been doing pretty well on tips lately, but she had kept the money hidden from Lars; otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able to hang on to what little they had.

She’d about decided that she was stranded on Luxaria forever until the Norludian, Waroun, had struck up a conversation with her. He’d promised that the passage to Aquerei would be well within her means—though he hadn’t named a figure—which got her to thinking that maybe things really
could
be different. Going to Aquerei wasn’t something she’d ever considered before; the idea had just popped into her head as she talked with Waroun. Sure, her father had been a full-blooded Aquerei, but that was about all she knew about him. She’d never met him and hadn’t the slightest notion of where to look for him. She wasn’t even completely sure of his full name. The only thing she had left of him was the pendant he’d given to her mother before he disappeared. Ava had an idea that if Lars were to leave her, she wouldn’t even have that much.

Therefore it was imperative that she leave him first.

Waroun had said if she wanted to go to Aquerei, she had to hurry. After throwing a blanket over Lars’s snoring body, she checked the charge on her pulse pistol. It was getting low, so she set it in the charger and began stuffing what few belongings she possessed into a garbage bag. If Lars caught her at it, she could always say she was just taking out the trash—which wouldn’t have been a lie, since most of her things qualified as such.

Except for one thing that Lars knew nothing about: the crystal pendant that had been given to her on her sixteenth birthday. Tears had shimmered in her mother’s eyes as she handed Ava the box, whispering, “It belonged to your father. He wanted you to have it.” Ava had known nothing about the stone prior to that moment and had hated her father for his absence from her life. But to her, this necklace was proof of many things—not only of her father’s existence, but that he cared enough to leave her something beautiful.