“I didn’t say—”
“Your expression says that I must be crazy. But I still want to taste you.”
The impersonal oculars separated over the bridge of his nose and retracted into his temples. Brilliant blue-gold eyes flickered over her, seeing her directly and liking what he saw. His honest approval undid all her reservations.
She wanted her own taste of his masculine lips, parting so slightly over his even white teeth. He was too good-looking, more gorgeous than the hottest boys she had grown up with on Mares Mercury.
But she was the girl all the boys groaned about when the bottle landed on her during their spin-and-kiss games. He just…hadn’t looked at her closely enough yet. Or something.
“Oh. Um, your mind will go nuts under stress.” She tried to get her breath back. He said he needed something of hers. She had to focus on reality, not fantasy. “So, how can I help you out?”
“Yes.” He pulled her into his arms and lowered his mouth.
~*~*~*~
Yves watched his target’s eyes dilate. Her lips parted, and a ghost of her pink tongue wet them with invitation. In the few fractions of a second before his lips touched hers, he traced the micro-expressions.
Panic, interest, hesitation.
But underneath it, desire. Molten hot hunger. A too-human desire for physical connection, and one that he suddenly, strangely felt compelled to give her.
Plus, they had approximately two minutes until the freight elevator arrived. All the enforcers and station resources were engaged, containing the hull breach Mercury had caused, and he would spend the last minutes of his functioning life gathering data. The rogue had said he would regret that she was his first kiss. Regret? Unfathomable.
His target found it to be unfathomable as well, but for different reasons. She stopped him with a hand on his mouth. “You can’t really want to kiss me.”
“Why not?”
She forced a laugh to cover a deeper discomfort. “I accused you of blowing up a station. That puts you in a romantic mood?”
Ah, a stall tactic. “I can tell you are attracted to my looks. I see nothing wrong with acting on that attraction.”
Her brows drew together.
Too honest.
He tested out humble response pattern 617e—self-pity in the face of skepticism. “It’s okay. I disappointed the last woman I kissed, so you must somehow sense that I also won’t satisfy you.” He sighed with regret.
Her delicate lashes fluttered and her chest heaved, making her deliciously rounded breasts rise and fall. The tasty dark indent between them was perfect for him to place his face and trace her bounty with his tongue. Something he had never wanted to do to a woman before, but now he was very much curious to do so.
“Oh, no,” she assured him. “It’s not you.”
“You don’t have to make me feel better.” He kept his voice low, playing her reactions exactly as he had been trained to do. “It is true that I don’t have much experience.”
“You? Little experience?” She shook her head, releasing those long, thick locks of hair. “I can’t believe that, actually.”
He tucked one tendril behind her ear. Soft, like the rest of her body, and wavy as sand beside the ocean. Her lips parted, and hunger filled her eyes. His fingertips dropped lower and brushed her cheek. The touch tingled, electric. Her skin was softer than he had imagined, and the delicate blush only made him want to touch her more.
As a data point only, of course.
“I’ve never wanted to kiss anyone before.” He elevated his tone and locked his eyes on hers, infusing every gesture with extra sincerity. It was surprisingly easy. He felt very sincere. “I’ve never met anyone who fascinated me like you do.”
She swallowed. A lifetime of caution contracted the tiny skeptical muscles around her eyes.
Interesting. His forthright, truthful words didn’t penetrate her armor of self-effacement.
He dropped back to the guilt-sympathy lens that worked so much better. “Before today, I only focused on work. A lifetime of being alone is the consequence.”
Doubt gave way to sympathy. “You’ve been alone too?”
“Always.”
She bit her lip. Wanting to believe him, and terrified of being misled.
Truly, she was so simple. He knew behavior analysis, not interactions, but playing her didn’t require a specialist. She probably got manipulated a lot in her life. Her overactive social-moral complex and low self-worth meant she’d allow the manipulation even if she realized it was happening.
Someone needed to shake her and tell her she was worthy of love. Whatever damages her past lovers had inflicted, her future held men who knew more. She needed someone to protect her from those who would take advantage of her until she realized that truth. She deserved better.
Well, of course, protecting her was someone else’s problem.
“Please,” he emphasized, lowering his voice to a more intimate register and watching the matching flush move across her soft cheeks. “Sometimes I feel like I need someone so bad I could beg.”
She reacted to his words exactly as predicted. Her eyes grew soft and unfocused. “That would be terrible.”
“It would.” He leaned closer. His nose brushed her heated cheek.
Her breath hitched.
An enticing reaction. He wanted more. Many more. “Won’t you help me?”
She slowly lifted her chin.
Yes. His cock stirred, and hard-won triumph pulsed through his system even as his logic processors called his victory predictable and easy.
He took in the curve of her cheek, the gentle fringe of her lashes, the pure innocence of her lips. The debris-dusted iridescence of her deep purple hair. Pulsing heat poured into his cock, swelling it against his flight suit. She smelled of sweat and fear and something he didn’t recognize. Probably bacterial; more than 10 percent single-celled symbiotic organisms composed a fully human body. Which might also explain, a micrometer before his lips touched hers, a distant scent of peaches.
Her mouth moved, soft and warm and somehow sun-dappled, like a field-ripened fruit, and tasting her awoke a strange craving in him to taste more. He advanced slowly, experiencing every exquisite minute. The firmness of her teeth, delicate and feminine. The feel of her mouth moving softly against his own. The small, inarticulate sounds she made in the back of her throat.
Something deep inside him shifted.
What was that? He paused to chase the fleeting sensation. But he couldn’t turn his attention from her warmth, her taste, her.
CHAPTER FOUR
Mercury was locking lips with a blazing-hot stranger minutes after the attempt on their lives.
He tasted like heaven.
Literally.
His mouth moved on hers, heavy and sweet. His tongue swept her worries away. They touched, mated, tangled. Everything she did, he matched and improved. Little shocks zipped through her, eliciting a soft, satisfied moan. Like a first taste of chocolate. Heady and rich and perfect.
Noise wailed from the corridor wall.
Ah, yes. They were still in trouble.
She untangled herself. Delicious or not, she had almost died, and no one promised she had outrun the danger.
But the corridor remained empty. The lights remained yellow. Everyone locked down in case the hull finished breaching and reverse pressure squeezed out all the air in an explosive decompression.
The man seemed frozen, concentrating on some music she couldn’t hear. His fingers twitched.
She had killed him.
Mercury put her hands on his arm. “Are you okay?”
He blinked, slowly focusing on her. His eyes seemed to shift colors from cerulean blue to cobalt, and the gold deepened to amber. He looked past her, as though he didn’t know her.
“Hey. Look at me.”
He blinked to her. His eyes returned to normal. “What is it?”
“I asked if you were okay.”
He frowned. “No. I don’t
think I am.”
She gripped his arms. He didn’t look injured, and he only seemed pensive. A stab of worry forced her to deflect her concern with a joke. “The kiss wasn’t that bad, was it?”
“I don’t know.” He rubbed something invisible on his arm. “It was disturbing.”
Her heels sank into the floor. Great. That was a new one. She kissed men and disturbed them. “Disturbing how?” Her voice squeaked. She coughed and cleared her throat.
He turned those gorgeous eyes on her as if he sought the answer to a puzzle in her. “To put it in words, I feel like I gave you a piece of my soul just now, during our kiss. But I don’t have a soul, and so, I’m not sure how to get that piece back, or whether I should want to.”
His words moved her like poetry. Beautiful, mysterious, and once again, affirming of her feminine power. He studied her with a long, searching gaze, a tiny wrinkle marring his otherwise perfect brow. She felt warm all over.
He sucked in a breath and straightened. “What made you stop?”
“Our kiss?” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “Something buzzed on the wall.”
“Ah.” He moved past her to the closed doors. “Thank you, Mercury.”
The man forced an elevator open. His hands left prints gouged into the metal frame.
That…was amazing.
He must be wearing a strength suit, like the kind her uncle talked about using in the military.
She upgraded him from graduate student to tactician. A smart man with a smarter gun. And then it struck her exactly how little she knew about him.
“Were you sent by my uncle? You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”
“Yves.”
“What?”
“My name is Yves Santiago.” He ripped the heartbeat sensors off the wall. Metal shrieked. He tossed the sensors into the hall. They dented the floor and bounced. “And I am not acquainted with your uncle.”
He pulled her inside the freight elevator. The doors closed.
She put her hands on the closed doors. No buttons.
Yves stood right behind her.
But who the heck was he? Inhumanly strong. Able to blow up a hub. Not affiliated with her uncle. Gifted with the words of a poet.
And a delicious kisser.
The hair on the back of her neck tingled.
“Your heart rate is elevated, Mercury.”
She turned to face him. “How—”
Her stomach abruptly rose to her throat.
Then her feet floated off the ground.
She eased toward the ceiling as gravity abruptly failed.
The whole station had to be in total chaos right now. Gravity usually failed after life support. Which meant that life, as all the thousands of people on the station had experienced, was about to end.
Yet Yves Santiago floated calmly a foot off the ground next to the doors with his arms crossed.
She lifted her knees to her chest in a protective ball.
His brows drew together. “You should come down.”
She curled away. “Why?”
“Because we are about to reach our destination.”
Gravity slammed back into operation. She flew toward the floor. Yves stepped underneath and caught her, landing evenly on his feet. She found herself again enclosed in his embrace, her arms wrapped around his broad shoulders, her head buried against his protective chest.
Oh. The elevator had descended at a speed for inhuman freight, which didn’t need gravity.
Her heart thumped hard in her chest. His arms tightened. Their welcome warmth promised safety – and sex. Delicious, hard, masculine sex. He moved her closer, their bodies communicating where words were inadequate. Mercury started to lift her chin.
He abruptly stepped back.
Oh. Again. She breathed out, knowing that this was not the time or place, and she was not the girl. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”
Conflicts flashed across his normally calm expression. Regret chased by resolution. He took her hand. “Stay close to me.”
Doors opened onto engine oil and grinding shrieks.
A conveyor belt loader rolled to their elevator. Behind it, a series of belts moved freight into tubes terminating, eventually, at loading bays. Signs warned about falling crates and asphyxiation.
Yves stepped out.
“Where are we?”
“The unmanned shipping docks.”
His answer didn’t help her. “And what are we doing here?”
“Following the person who betrayed you to the Robotics Faction.” He leaned close. His scent filled her nose—rough, electrical, and all too masculine—and he scooped her up into his arms. “Catching her is time-sensitive.”
She flopped across his wide shoulders. “Whoah.”
The loader’s arms moved up and down, its gravity-assisted “hands” clicking for contents.
Yves stepped on its confused arms, rode it toward the belts, and jumped straight up. The motion drove his shoulder deeper into Mercury’s belly. She oofed.
His fingers hooked in the grate. He swung open an access panel and levered them both inside.
She was unspeakably impressed.
Impenetrable muscle rippled across his back and squeezed his buttocks, well highlighted by the appreciably formfitting flight suit. He walked along the mesh, staring down at the moving machinery, carrying her as though she weighed less than the lightest sack.
She stared down through the grating. “Can we talk about this plan?”
“A woman put you out as bait to be killed,” he said, answering her original question. “I intend to stop her before she gets to anyone else.”
“Then you know? About how I ended up on the Kill List, and my—” Ah, the need to protect Cressida stopped her tongue. Cressida had always been at risk, and there was a slight chance she still remained hidden. “Um, about why the Robotics Faction wants to kill people?”
“I do.” He ducked her under a giant exhaust tube. “I am also on their list, so to speak. Now the entire hub is looking for both of us.”
Wow. He shared her predicament.
“But not down here,” he said. “Humans aren’t allowed in this area. Watch for a rogue female.”
“Can she convince the Robotics Faction to leave us alone?”
“That’s impossible.”
Her heart sank. “If she’s the reason we’re on the list, then why can’t she get us off it again?”
“It’s irreversible. All we can do now it save the other people we care about.” His voice dropped to an icy register. “And stop her permanently.”
His shoulder pushed into her guts. She shifted. “Okay. I can walk.”
He put her down. She wobbled on the greasy mesh.
His hand closed around hers. “Hurry.”
She stumbled after him. Grinding machinery filled the corridors below. “It’s not very safe. How do you know she’s down here?”
“She avoided all sensors on her way in. Logically, she did not dock at a passenger slip. As an expert hacker, she must have illegally docked at an unmanned terminal.”
Mercury hugged her elbows. “But she had to walk off her ship.”
“She could have worn a chameleon suit,” he said. “In which case, neither of us will see her to stop her from walking back on. But I have a different theory. Subtlety does not appear to be her style.”
They passed the dry docks and freighter terminals. Distant shuddering marked ships docking and taking off, and a loud hum of gigantic machinery soon unfolded below them: cranes lifting cargo the size of Mercury’s old apartment building from conveyor belts to flat ship-loaders, trucks in long lines jetting horizontally and vertically, and the giant maws of ship after ship along the hive-like docking bays stretching into infinity.
They walked out onto grating high above a docking bay. Yves took a branching path, peeled back a loose grate, and dropped down into an empty control booth. Large windows overlooked the bay.
A recent mug of coffee, half-drunk,
sat on a warming plate. Steam curled from the fresh liquid.
“Um,” she started to say.
“I know.” He brought up the screens and whirled through a series of numbers. “Most ships in this section dock on airless slips. Hers will be in one of the few hangars that support life. Give me one minute to narrow our candidates.”
“What’s your theory about how she’s moving undetected?”
“I believe she has an identification problem similar to yours. But hers is more advanced, and under her control.” He tapped the screens. “I am looking for the dot that doesn’t belong.”
A teeny cart wove fearlessly between the behemoth machines. In the passenger seat rode a woman in a slim flight suit and oversized, white-rimmed oculars.
Mercury pointed. “Or you could just look out the window instead.”
He rose to blink at her find. “Well done.” Sitting again, he typed orders and authorization codes into the screens.
Below, one of the trucks yawned out of line and into the path of the tiny cart. The cart jerked to avoid it. Another truck swerved and started to tip. The cart gunned underneath sliding crates and narrowly avoided crushing damage.
Mercury’s heart rose to her throat. “Something’s wrong.”
“I programmed everything to crash the cart.”
“What?”
Another truck swerved and toppled over. The cart screeched to a halt right in front of the spinning wheels.
They tried to back up, but a vehicle blocked their escape.
Mercury motioned at the screens. “Stop it!”
Yves raised a brow. “Problem?”
“You’re going to kill her!”
“That is the idea.” He locked his jaw and stared out the window.
No.
Her mouth dropped open.
The woman crawled up the walls of the death trap forming around her. She appealed to the control booth. To Mercury.
For help.
Mercury couldn’t watch someone die.
She had to countermand the orders. There, behind the command terminal, the power unit. She yanked the connecting cables. The control panels darkened.
Outside, unmanned vehicles careened into each other, crashing explosively.
“They didn’t stop!” she shouted.
“No,” Yves said, in a normal tone, “and now you’ve disabled all their controls.”
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