All that was shot to hell when she saw Kendrick’s wolfish smile. It reminded her of a predator about to jump on his prey. A premonition of foreboding skittered down her spine. She had a bad feeling about this.
“Premier Conway.”
Joseph clasped his hand and bowed respectfully. “Prince Kendrick. I am grateful you agreed to see me on such short notice.”
Kendrick nodded, casually turning to the woman who stood behind the Premier. “Hello.”
She was stiff as a board, her tiny fists clenched at her sides. Kendrick saw Joseph’s eyebrows rise in faint surprise at her reaction. “This is my daughter, Tamara. She works for the Federation Special Services and is head of my security.”
Tamara. Kendrick liked the sound of her name. He stifled a delighted grin at the tide of red color that spread over her cheeks. She was even more beautiful in the daylight, despite being dressed severely in that uniform. “Welcome to Bandar.” He had to force himself to turn away from her and once again address Conway. “The Federation and Bandar may not be on the best footing at the moment, but I consider you a friend, Joseph.”
The other man looked relieved. “I’m glad you say that because I desperately need your help.”
Kendrick schooled his face into an impassive mask. “I gather this is of great importance?”
Joseph inhaled deeply. “Federation politics is in shambles. Mal’nar has caused a great divide between Earth and her long time allies. It has also stirred discontent among Federation planet members and senators. As the new Premier, it falls on me to try to mend diplomatic relations and hope that the situation will be reversed.”
Kendrick wasn’t surprised by any of this. Mal’nar was an incompetent fool, hardly qualified to lead the Federation. Then again, humans had a long history of electing idiots to powerful positions.
“Talks between the Federation and Xerex have broken down. The Xerexians are no longer interested in trying to negotiate peace between our two worlds.” Joseph paused, unsuccessfully hiding the worry he was feeling. “They’ve attacked one of our outposts and left no survivors. They are bent on waging war.”
“Xerex instigates trouble,” Kendrick stated. He was a member of the Council of Galaxies and they were all aware of Xerex and its propensity for conflict. “All their riches go to fund their wars. They seek to conquer worlds to replenish their treasury and increase revenue. Earth would have a difficult time against them.”
“That is why I’m here, Kendrick. Earth needs your help. We will never survive a protracted war. Millions of my people will die. Only an alliance between Bandar and Earth Federation can stave off a full fledged attack from the Xerexians.”
It was true. An alliance with Bandar would make Xerex think twice about a full assault. They wouldn’t dare provoke his ire. On the other hand, he was loath to become involved in human politics. He had no inclination to be part of the mess they themselves created. “I have no desire to wade through intergalactic politics.”
Even as Kendrick said the words, his thoughts were already galloping straight to the stubborn, fiery-haired female who stood quietly in the background.
Joseph squared his shoulders. “I am asking you to help us. You’re the only one I know who would be able to stop this war.”
“What is the Federation willing to give in return for Bandar’s assistance?” Kendrick asked softly.
“Anything within my power,” the premier answered readily. “We have just discovered territory rich with minerals in Quadrant 23. The Federation is willing to sign that over to Bandar.”
“I’m not interested in minerals.” He zeroed in on Tamara, who was staring back at him with growing alarm. Letting the silence stretch on a little longer, he sauntered over to where she stood. “Anything I want?”
“Kendrick --” Conway’s tone was puzzled.
He locked eyes with her as seconds ticked by. “I want you.”
Tamara’s gasp of disbelief echoed and hung in the air, mingling with her father’s murmur of outrage. Had she heard him right? “What did you say?”
“You,” Kendrick murmured softly. “I want what you denied me that night.” His gray eyes were calm when he addressed her father once more. “In exchange for helping the Federation, your daughter, Tamara, will be mine.”
Joseph Conway spluttered with anger. “My daughter is not a chattel. She is not some prize being offered on the table.”
“In that case, I cannot help you.”
Her father’s expression clouded. “Anything else but my daughter.”
“She is what I want.”
“You don’t even know her,” Joseph blurted out before he stopped and turned to Tamara, a shadow of accusation crossing his face. “Or do you?”
She flushed. Things were going from bad to worse. “Father, I --”
Joseph raised a hand to ward off any more words from her and gave Kendrick a stiff nod. “It seems we’ve wasted your time. Goodbye, Prince Kendrick.” Joseph headed for the door. “Tamara?”
She didn’t budge, still looking at Kendrick. She was not going to be the reason for their failure in securing Bandar’s help. “I want to talk to him alone.”
Her father’s features twisted with indignant fury. “No. You are not some possession to bargain with. You’re my daughter. We’re leaving.”
Tamara moved to her father’s side and squeezed his hand. “Father, please. I’m a grown woman, not a child.” She glanced back at Kendrick. “Excuse us for a moment, please.” Without giving her father a chance to resist, she led him down to the marble steps out to the garden. “Listen to me.”
“I can’t believe you’re actually entertaining the thought of accepting his crude proposition!” Joseph spat out the words. “I will not allow it.”
“This is Earth’s only chance to avoid a war. You know it and I know it.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Her father was barely holding his anger in check. “I will not let you do this. You’re not a whore.”
“Neither am I a child,” Tamara replied in a soft, firm voice. “I can make decisions for myself.”
Joseph’s brows drew together in displeasure. “Are you telling me you’re considering his offer?”
“I don’t see any other choice. We need Kendrick’s help.” With trembling hands, she reached out to him. Her thoughts were jumbled. She needed to think with a clear head. The lone fact she could glean from this whole mess was that Earth’s only chance to avoid war was about to slip away. “Please, Father. Will you let me talk to him?” Her father glared at her in stony silence. “Just let me talk to him.”
“I have a feeling there’s a lot here I don’t know,” he snapped. “I’ll be waiting for you in the hover cruiser. You have a few minutes. After that, we head back to the ship.” Tamara saw anger line every muscle of his body as Joseph Conway stalked away, leaving her standing there.
Tamara sank down on a stone bench, a cold knot forming in her stomach. The situation was dire. It felt as if the weight of the world was on her shoulders. She thought of Demeter and that fateful night a week ago when she met Kendrick. How the hell was she supposed to know who he was?
Chapter Three
“I used to think nothing could surprise me anymore,” Orrin stated in a dry tone. “I’ve never known you to demand a woman in exchange for political help.”
From inside the palace, Kendrick looked out at Tamara as she stood in the middle of the garden with her arms wrapped around herself. “You remember her from that night at Demeter?”
“Who can forget that shade of hair? She’s a beautiful woman, yes, but when she appeared uninterested and left the club, I thought you’d found another, more willing, partner for the night.”
Kendrick grunted. “I was intrigued.”
Orrin raised his eyebrows. “Intrigued enough to offend the Premier of Earth Federation, who happens to be her father?”
“He asked for my help. I merely told him what I wanted in return.”
“And if she refuses?”
“She won’t.”
“You seem confident of that.”
Kendrick chose not to answer. Since the night he’d met her, he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind. Oh, he’d had women too numerous to count. None had ever affected him as she did. His lips tilted at the corners. Their meeting had been unusual and only piqued his interest more. The encounter with Tamara that night had left him speechless with lust and admiration. Not a lot of people achieved that. He didn’t like to admit it, but he from that night on, Kendrick had been obsessed. This was his chance to slake his desire for her. He wasn’t about to let her slip away again.
“Well?”
At the sound of the deep, accented voice, Tamara whirled to see Kendrick behind her. His confident stance made her clench her fists. She swallowed, desperately trying to bring her heart rate back to normal.
“You didn’t tell me who you were the other night,” she managed to push past stiff lips.
He grinned. “If you recall, we were too busy doing something else.”
When he smiled like that, the words dangerously sexy flashed in big, red letters in her mind. Tamara tried not to notice that even in a loose flowing shirt and dark trousers, Kendrick exuded an aura of confidence and sex. Focus. Don’t get distracted. She cleared her throat. “Am I correct in assuming nothing I say will make you change your mind?”
His eyes never wavered from her. “Yes.”
She did her best to glare at him from her much lower height. “I’m not a whore. I suggest you don’t treat me like one.”
“I never thought of you as one. I invited you once to share my bed, you refused. Now you need something from me. In return, you will belong to me. In my bed. Doing my bidding.”
“I doubt I’ll prove to be as biddable as you think.”
Kendrick crossed his arms over his chest. “Is that a challenge?”
Tamara clenched her fists tighter. “It’s a fact. If you truly want to help us out, ask for something else. Anything else.”
“I don’t want anything else.”
“And if I don’t agree?”
He showed no sign of relenting. “Then you go home empty handed and your people must get ready for a war you cannot hope to win.”
Tamara seethed with impotent fury. She held the fate of Earth in her hands. If she refused, the Federation would go to war. What choice did she have? “If I agree, what then?” His silver gray eyes suddenly gleamed with satisfaction. Damn it, he knows I am close to caving in.
“I will announce the alliance of Earth and Bandar, which we hope will dissuade Xerex from waging a full scale war on your home. I will also endeavor to bring the Xerexians back to the negotiating table to ensure the threat of war is forever removed.”
Exactly what Earth needed from Bandar. Tamara hated feeling vulnerable at any time, yet here she was, caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Her mind raced in desperation, trying to come up with other options. Everything pointed to the same inevitable conclusion. She really had no choice but to accept his proposition, if only to save her people.
“This agreement can’t be open ended. I want a time frame when it will be over.”
“Impossible. I tell you when the time is up.” The smug grin he sported only incensed her more.
If she was going to gain some leverage in this ridiculous one-sided deal, she’d better get it now. It was barbaric to be negotiating the use of her body. “Six months,” she proposed tautly.
He raised an eyebrow. “If the Xerexians are foolish enough to decide to go ahead with this war, Bandar will provide military assistance. Surely that is worth more than six months?”
“What if they don’t?”
“We’ll decide if and when that time comes.”
“I can’t just agree to an indefinite stay. You have to at least give me that.” She forged on, tamping down her impotent rage. “I will not stay here until you tire of me. I’d like to get back to my own life. Things might be different here, but on Earth, family is important to us.”
Kendrick mulled it over. “One year.” His implacable tone implied there was no more room for negotiating that one.
“Agreed,” she replied curtly. “In return you will do whatever is necessary to aid the Federation if this war comes to fruition.”
“Agreed.”
“I want my own room. We will devise a schedule for when…” she ignored the heat she could feel spreading on her cheeks and pulled in a deep breath, “for when we will be together.”
“No. You share my room and we’ll have sex whenever I want.”
Neanderthal. “I don’t intend to be a sex slave.”
“Need I remind you that the Federation is desperate for my help? You might do well to remember that before you make any more ridiculous demands.” Then his face softened marginally. “I think I am being very generous in even allowing you to set some conditions.”
With a tight nod, she acknowledged the truth in his words. “True. And I’m grateful.” Indeed she was, although it still didn’t sit well with her that she was put in this untenable situation. “However, I’d like to reserve the right to make amendments to our agreement if anything else comes up.”
“Within reason,” he countered immediately.
Under the circumstances, this was better than she’d hoped. “I believe we have an agreement,” she managed to croak.
Kendrick gave her a boyish smile. “I’m satisfied.” He bent low.
Tamara froze as he drew closer. “Humans normally just shake hands.”
“I think the intimate nature of our agreement requires us to do more than shake hands, don’t you think? We now have a contract… to pleasure.”
Contract to pleasure. Did he have to make it sound so sordid?
He brought a hand up to skim her cheek, running the pad of his finger over her lower lip. “I will make it my mission to give you so much pleasure that you will scream from it. Soon, Tamara,” he whispered outrageously, dipping lower to brush her lips with his. “Soon you will be begging for my touch.”
“Never,” she whispered defiantly, her insides knotting tightly as she looked at his lips.
“You said that once,” he reminded her in a low, sensuous voice. “Yet by tonight, you will be in my bed, pleasuring me, offering me your body and taking me deep inside you.” He kissed her. It wasn’t a slow, tentative kiss. It was confident and intimate. The kiss was hot, hungry. In the few moments their lips melded, she felt taken over and claimed.
Kendrick threaded his fingers through her hair, upsetting the neat coil she worked so hard to achieve. She murmured a protest. He took no heed. Walking her backwards, he pinned her against a concrete garden wall and lifted her leg around his hip. His stiff cock nudged against her pussy.
“I can’t wait until I have you beneath me.”
The guttural words were like a splash of cold water, clearing the haze of desire from her brain. Tamara found the strength to tear her lips free and pushed at him. What was wrong with her? One kiss and she’d totally forgotten everything else. “I need to talk to my father.”
“I will go with you.”
She breathed a small sigh of relief when he stepped away. Making an effort to fix her hair, she stilled when he said, “Don’t do that. I like it better loose.”
Oh, the temptation to disobey was strong but Tamara remembered the age-old adage pick your battles. It was a little enough concession to leave her hair down. The hard part was yet to come, telling her father about the deal she’d made with a devil. She’d never backed away from anything in her entire life, though at that moment she would have given anything not to have to inform him of her decision to stay with Kendrick.
She found her father pacing impatiently in the grand foyer instead of waiting in the transport cruiser. Upon seeing the lines of exhaustion and worry etched into his face, the misgivings she felt eased. She was doing the right thing. The Federation needed Bandar’s help. If this was the only way to secure it, then so be it.
Joseph Conway looked up at that exact moment. His narrow-eyed stare encompassed both of them before he inclined his head at Tamara. “Let’s go.”
“I’m staying.”
Her father squared his shoulders. “The transport is waiting for us. We’re leaving.”
Tamara flinched when he pretended not to hear her. “Kendrick and I have come to an agreement.”
“Tamara --” Joseph paused and took a deep, steadying breath. When he spoke again, his voice was calmer. “You don’t have to do this. I will find another way.”
She wished she could wipe away the anger in her father’s eyes. “This is the only way.”
Kendrick spoke up. “Tomorrow, I will announce the new alliance between our worlds.”
Joseph finally acknowledged Kendrick. “I do not need Bandar’s help.”
Kendrick didn’t flinch under her father’s furious stare. “Tamara has made her decision.”
Tamara clung to her resolve and met her father’s condemnation head on. “We have no choice,” she argued in a soft voice. “War with Xerex would decimate our people and tear apart the Federation. We need his help.”
Her father clenched his fists. “We will find another way.”
“No, Father. Kendrick and I have an agreement. I will abide by it.”
“Tamara --”
She clasped her father’s hand, pleading for his understanding. At the same time, she wanted to reassure him that she was doing this willingly. “I will be fine. I’m not being forced into doing this. I want to do this. Now I want you to go home and do what must be done to avert disaster.”
Joseph stared at her for a long moment, his unhappiness tearing at her heart. “I do not like this. I didn’t come here with the intention of bartering you in exchange for Kendrick’s help.”
Tamara blinked back her tears at the self-condemnation in her father’s voice. “I know.” She hugged him. “Please trust me when I say I will be fine,” she whispered.
“I can’t.”
“I know what I’m doing,” she promised.
After a long moment, her father’s arms went around her. “I suppose there’s nothing I can say that will make you change your mind from this foolhardy decision?” he asked in a resigned tone.
Contract to Pleasure Page 3