Boneless, she sagged back, Lorcan’s pure, masculine satisfaction echoing against her ear, his breaths harsh and uneven. As everything in her atmosphere leveled off, the sweep of his thumb along the inside of her thigh caught her notice first, and she tensed. For the first time, she worried who might come out the victor if she didn’t get her ass out of there.
He dropped an open-mouthed kiss on her shoulder. “And I don’t even have you in my bed yet.”
And he wouldn’t.
This was as far as things ever went between them. She might regret that if circumstances were different. She couldn’t be his or any man’s slave. Being bought as part of a planned mission was light-years from what Lorcan had in mind. Mind-blowing orgasm or not, the man was dangerous in ways she didn’t want to contemplate until she had a few star systems between them.
She let her head drop back against his shoulder, finding it impossible not to think about his mouth when he covered her lips with his. The brief taste hinted at the arousal he struggled to control—judging by the flexing fingers that gripped her hip.
An arousal she had no choice but to take advantage of.
Kaela deepened the kiss, not needing to exaggerate the moan that broke past her lips. Through heavy lids, he watched her slide her hand up her stomach and palm her breast, teasing the hard peak with her thumb.
“We have to go.” He didn’t sound very convincing.
She ground her bottom down on him, heard him hiss in pleasure. “Kiss me like you mean it,” she begged, tangling her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck and tugging him closer.
He didn’t even hesitate, sinking back into her mouth with an intensity that would be permanently hardwired into her memory banks. A melt-and-spontaneously-combust kiss she should have been prepared for after what just happened.
She moved her hand to the base of his skull, gently massaging before she fell prey to his lethal mouth all over again. She was damn near ready to straddle the man’s lap by the time she found the right spots and pushed hard at the pressure points.
Lorcan slumped against her.
Ninety seconds and counting.
She lowered him to the floor, taking more care than she had time for. Within reach of the merchant’s kit, standard tools used for nothing more than scanning and recording measurements, she fished out what she needed.
Recalibrating the two devices took no time, but using their modified output to override and disable the locking mechanism on the restraints took a little longer. The band hummed and fell away from her wrist.
Forty-five seconds and counting.
Kaela snatched up the top piece of silk and quickly tied it, throwing the cloak over her shoulders as she peered past the edge of the curtain. No one stood between her and the door.
Or so she thought, right up until she was within ten feet of it and a man, accompanied by two burly private security guys, came into the shop and effectively blocked her path.
Cold, glacier-blue eyes skimmed her from head to foot, one black brow arching as he glanced past her. “Lose something, Lorcan?”
She didn’t need to look back to know her new prime had come around thirty seconds earlier than she’d anticipated.
Fuck.
* * *
Lorcan scowled at the woman he’d let turn his world upside down. Twice.
Hell, his two younger sisters excelled at holding men by the balls, using their looks and the brains people often overlooked to call the shots. Having watched the twins steamroll every guy dumb enough to grovel at their feet since the summer they developed breasts, he should have seen Kaela’s stunt coming.
And he probably would have if she hadn’t come so spectacularly undone in his lap.
Breathless, uninhibited, wild. Every arch of her hips and panted breath, her lips swollen from his mouth, shot him right to the edge. At his best guess, he’d been one gut-wrenching kiss from his own explosive release when she’d pulled that pressure point crap.
Oddly enough, that pissed him off more than her attempt at taking off. He couldn’t remember getting so hot, so fast for a woman, and he should probably thank her for saving him from feeling like an even bigger idiot. A thirty-year-old man did not come in his damn pants like a teenager in the middle of a wet dream.
“Should I have lied when you asked me not to run? Would that have soothed your ego?”
He ignored her, giving serious thought to gagging the sentinel to avoid further verbal reminders of his second cosmic oversight—third if he counted buying her in the first place. He was out of his damn mind.
Right now, he needed to focus on his game plan and not the half-naked woman restrained across the room. The angry half-naked woman.
She slouched in the chair he’d secured her to, her arms locked behind her back. Her unperturbed expression betrayed none of her earlier hostility except when she glanced at him a little too long. He almost asked if he looked stupid enough to buy into her deceptively calm demeanor, an act no doubt intended to make him underestimate her.
Fat chance.
A merchant’s measuring kit. That’s what she’d used to get her restraints off. A fucking measuring kit. He knew his share of tricks of the trade, but that had been a new one for him. If he wasn’t perfectly content to stay furious with himself for letting his cock and some poorly timed sense of revenge drag him into this, he might even admire her resourcefulness.
Crossing his arms behind his head, he stared at the plated ceiling of his quarters on Varek’s passenger cruiser, doing his best to look bored. If he gave in to the restless energy buzzing under his skin, one of two things would happen. He’d throttle the sentinel for taking him out with a sneaky maneuver he should have anticipated or he’d finish what they’d started in the merchant’s back room.
Seeing as she still wore nothing but two threadbare strips of silk, his libido was leaning toward the latter.
Perfect.
Maybe he should have handed her over to Zypher to deal with after his timely appearance at the merchant’s shop. One look at his friend and Lorcan knew Zypher didn’t approve. Or hadn’t until Lorcan took him aside and sold him on the benefit of keeping her close. A sentinel made one hell of a bargaining chip if things didn’t play out as expected.
In thirty minutes, he was expected to put in an appearance at the banquet three decks above. Tonight’s party kicked off the three-day celebration that would conclude with an extravagant and exclusive affair at Varek’s villa on Pursias.
That left Lorcan seventy-two hours to finalize his plans to liberate the former quadrant chancellor of a post-Exodus artifact. An artifact acquired by far more nefarious methods than Lorcan would employ on his worst enemy.
He sat up, rubbing at the ache in his chest that rose to the surface whenever his thoughts veered toward his friend Erik. They all knew the risks that came with some of the more dangerous salvage operations, but getting shot in the back by Varek wasn’t one of them.
Lorcan had only himself to blame for foolishly letting an interested buyer visit the salvage site, never anticipating the unusual request would cost him his friend. Worse, he hadn’t even been there when it happened. No, he’d been preoccupied with scanning the outlying areas for any priceless artifacts that had been lost during Exodus.
Nearly ten thousand ships left Earth after crystalline wiped out ninety percent of the world’s population. Over four hundred ships never reached the Terra star system the Exodus pioneers claimed as their new home, leaving hundreds of potential salvage sites for excavation—if one knew where to look.
It had been Erik who introduced him to treasure salvaging just after Lorcan’s parents died. Erik who had given him something else to focus on, to lose himself in, when he’d feared whether he and his sisters would make it on their own. He’d spent countless months learning how to work a site, embracing the excitement of a pending discovery and learning how to let it go when it came time to find a buyer.
And every step of the way Erik had been there. Celebrati
ng a priceless find, cursing when a promising site yielded nothing, negotiating a sale with a practiced disinterest and getting drunk with Lorcan whenever the occasion called for it. Watching two younger sisters grow up and turn heads everywhere they went, stirring up trouble at every opportunity, called for getting drunk a lot back then.
He should have been there for Erik. Should have been there before all he had to offer was a fucking hand to hold onto when his friend took his last breath.
Needing something else to focus on, he glanced at Kaela. “What was your assignment?” It hadn’t mattered in the beginning, but in the interest of covering his own ass, he needed to know.
“Don’t tell me my prime has deemed me worthy enough to converse with?” she drawled.
“Answer the question.”
“So you do prefer that I lie,” she surmised, her shoulders lifting on a sigh. “Well, it all started with a treasure salvager caught stealing—”
“Don’t screw with me, Kaela,” he snapped.
His patience, much like his self-control, felt frayed at the edges. Between her failed attempt to get away and his inability to focus on anything besides her for more than a minute at a time, his mood wasn’t improving any.
She gave him an innocent look. “Aren’t slaves supposed to be seen and not heard?”
“Which is clearly why you haven’t shut up since we came on board.” Either the woman had wanted to be gagged or she considered talking nonstop some kind of primitive psychological warfare. He certainly wouldn’t put it past her.
“Where are we headed?”
“The Outer Rim,” he lied, inspecting the packages that had been delivered when he’d been preoccupied with trying to talk himself into selling Kaela back to the bondskeeper.
She rolled her eyes. “We’re on a privately owned Class-A passenger cruiser. Unless the hundreds of people on board have a death wish, no pilot in their right mind would purposely take this ship so close to Battalia territory.”
If he had to choose between managing the slick sentinel or facing the rebel faction, who resorted to pirating in a best-case scenario and all-out slaughter in the worst, he’d gladly drive this boat right into the hot zone himself.
He dug through the clothing the merchant had prepared and tried to figure out what the hell was appropriate for a slave to wear to a banquet. If it wouldn’t draw more attention to himself, he’d leave her here, preferably drugged to guarantee she didn’t try something stupid.
Kaela leaned to the side as much as the restraints let her. “No matter what anyone says, I think that shade of purple would look great on you. Though I’d forget about that blue belt. Those kinds of accessories really undermine that I-have-a-fusion-pistol-shoved-up-my-ass edge you pull off so well.”
“I’m glad you approve of the purple.” He rifled through the rest of the clothes until he found the matching…bottoms? He held up the matching triangles that made the red silk binding her breasts look like a bathing towel.
The muscle in her jaw twitched, and he grinned. “Just your size.”
She scowled at him, following his movements as he carried the outfit, complete with a sheer covering, to the lavatory. He paused to retrieve an anklet sensor, programming it to both the biometric processor implanted in his thumb and to the ship’s Artificial Intelligence console.
“What, more presents? You shouldn’t have,” she mocked.
“I assume you know this little device will go off if you get farther than twenty-five feet away from me? And should you be clever enough to try rerouting the signal between this and my processor, the ship’s main AI unit will assume the override is an attempt to escape and will dispatch a security team before you even reach the door.”
Unimpressed, she said, “I guess you’re wishing you used that earlier, huh?”
He crouched at her feet, cupping her ankle. She tensed beneath his hand, and he lifted his head to meet her gaze. Wariness flashed in her eyes, and he tightened his hold. A shiver went through her, one he might have believed stemmed from anger if not for her chest rising sharply, her nipples jutting against the silk.
He focused on the anklet and not on every bared inch of smooth flesh between her breasts and where the material clung to her hips. And especially not to the shadow that fell between her parted thighs, thighs he too easily imagined himself spreading. It would take half a second to pull her to the edge of the chair, half a second and he could be running his mouth up the soft folds, parting the soft seam with his tongue and truly knowing the rich taste of her.
He didn’t have a doubt in his mind that she would lift her bottom, seeking his mouth as desperately as he would seek to make her beg for more. She may have used what happened in the merchant’s shop to her advantage, but she’d responded to him, came apart in his arms and he knew she’d enjoyed every second of it.
As if sensing the direction his thoughts were taking, Kaela pressed her legs closer together. His arousal strained against his pants.
“Too tight.” She nodded to indicate the grip he had on her ankle, her voice stretched thin.
Before he let himself be tempted—her untamed hair falling down her shoulders, her face a little bit flushed, her green eyes so damn captivating—he released the restraints, freeing her.
Her leg kicked out, sweeping one foot out from under him. It would have been two if he hadn’t been prepared for it. He pivoted, using his size to drop and take her to the floor with him.
She didn’t struggle. “Just testing you,” she offered with no trace of regret that the move hadn’t accomplished much.
“If you want my hands on you, all you have to do is ask.”
She snorted, bucking her hips to throw him off. He sucked in a breath at the carnal friction, slipping his lower half between her thighs to keep her back on the floor.
She locked her legs around him and squeezed just shy of pain. “Do you really think you could take me?”
He worked to swallow past the knot of lust jammed in his throat. “Sounds like a dare to me.”
“I was talking about physical combat.”
He raked his gaze down her chest. “Yeah, that’s what I call it too.”
Then she did the most unexpected thing of all—she laughed. A throaty, sexy laugh that skated down his spine and twisted his gut. Damn, she was beautiful. Tough, clever—dangerous.
Craving this woman and every gorgeous inch pinned to the floor beneath him didn’t mean forgetting what she’d cost him. The two of them hadn’t hooked up at a spaceport or on one of the hundreds of resorts on Solara.
Buying her had been a strategic move that meant more than just controlling her fate the way she’d controlled his. Whether she knew it or not, her presence would help him make up for the cargo he’d lost when she had him arrested. Losing sight of that, no matter how much the sentinel aroused feelings he didn’t want to think about, was unacceptable.
Lorcan grabbed her wrist and pulled her to her feet. She made no further move to slow him down, preceding him into the lavatory.
He locked the door behind them and dragged his shirt over his head. After turning on the water, he nodded to the sink. “Start getting ready.” He stripped the rest of his clothes off and stepped into the enclosure.
“You’re showering and I have to use this to wash up?” She held up the bar of soap and small cloth.
He held the door open. “You’re more than welcome to join me.” He might have insisted on it if they weren’t already running late.
She spun away from him, snatching up the cloth. He laughed, not waiting for her to get naked before he stuck his face under the spray and turned the temperature to frigid.
CHAPTER FOUR
Join him?
Not likely.
From the corner of her eye, Kaela took in every hard and wet masculine contour. His eyes were closed, his face turned into the water, letting her watch him unobserved. Failing to slip away on him was almost worth the tantalizing view. There was nothing pretty or smooth about his rugge
d frame, everything from the corded muscles to the wicked scar running along the inside of his thigh proclaimed him the rough and tumble treasure salvager.
“Change your mind?”
Her gaze darted to his, the lazy drawl making her stomach tug. She pivoted away, trying to pin down what it was about him that made her insides tangle together. More than a few of her missions centered around busting men like him. Reckless. Unpredictable. Rule breakers.
It was a wonder the Exodus pioneers managed to maintain any semblance of order when they left Earth in search of a new home two centuries ago. She didn’t have much to complain about when people like Lorcan, who star blazed across quadrants disregarding any policy or regulation that didn’t work for them, made her job necessary. Them and the Battalia, who were constantly in search of ways to undermine Dominion authority.
Maybe if the rebel faction ceased producing and selling crystalline, the mineral byproduct that poisoned Earth in less than fifty years, the Dominion would feel more compelled to work toward a peaceful resolution.
“Get a move on,” Lorcan ordered.
She resisted the urge to give him the finger and went about washing up before he finished showering. The splash of water and clouds of rising steam made her long to step beneath the warm spray and loosen the tension buried beneath her skin.
If she wasn’t convinced he’d make a move, she’d risk it. Unfortunately, she didn’t trust herself a whole lot more than she trusted him. Prime or not, the man had a body made for sprawling across before, during and after sex. More than once he’d proved it took little more than a heated look to make her want to dig out the white flag.
Weak, she decided. She doubted any other female sentinel chosen for this mission would have let her attraction to a man interfere with an assignment, even a dead-end one. As comforting as it was to believe she’d been too long without a lover, she’d found herself intrigued by Lorcan during their short time together on his ship.
He’d actually cooked for her, playfully insisting that helping him in the galley was the price of a ride home. A trip brought to a grinding halt when her curiosity got the best of her and she’d discovered the questionable cargo.
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