ë Archer - Collision Course

“That’s all small shit.” Mara sighed. “I’m looking for genuine profit. Really top-of-the-line tech to move.” She glanced over at Kell, her expression sultry. “Had my eye on a lunar villa for a while.

Someplace nice and private.”

He slid his hand further up her thigh until it brushed the hem of her very short skirt. She trembled slightly beneath his fingers. He rationalized that a pleasure slave wouldn’t be very interested in black market tech, but would certainly care about keeping his mistress physically gratified.

If Mara’s accelerated breathing was any indicator, she was indeed physically gratified.

“You want a big score then you can’t do better than what Gavra’s offering,” said Leyron.

“Make it interesting,” Mara drawled.

“Listen to this.” Bern started to edge closer to Mara, but a warning glance from Kell kept the smuggler from getting too close. “Gavra got hold of a genuine 8th Wing Wraith ship. And the pilot.”

Mara winced slightly, and Kell belatedly realized he’d gripped her thigh too tight. After he loosened his hold, he gave her an apologetic caress, all the while forcing his expression to neutrality.

“She’s going to have an auction,” Bern continued. “Doesn’t care if the storm’s cleared or not.

The tech and the pilot are too hot to hold.”

“Why not just sell them both to PRAXIS?” Mara frowned. “They’d be the biggest buyer.”

“Gavra’s twitchy,” said Leyron. “Doesn’t want to deal with PRAXIS directly.”

She nodded. “That leaves the lion’s share of the profit to whomever buys the ship and the pilot.”

“Might be able to negotiate a separate deal for the pilot,” Bern leered. “Heard she’s a tight piece of ass. Ow!” He rubbed his knee and glared at Kell. “You fucking kicked me. Almost hit my goods.”

Kell’s expression didn’t change. “I get jumpy if I sit still too long.”

“Where’s the auction?” Mara asked quickly before Kell and the smuggler started trading punches.

“Gavra’s being cagy about the whole situation,” said Leyron. “She’s posting the location here at the club, tomorrow morning.”

As Bern and Leyron speculated who would be attending the auction, Kell and Mara shared a quick, meaningful look. His heart beat a little faster. His muscles tensed. Before they could move on to the next stage of their mission, they needed to survive a night in this wild, dangerous city. Yet nothing was as wild and dangerous as the desire smoldering between them. One stray spark, and everything—including Kell and Mara themselves—would turn to ash.

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.