Hunters

by Michelle Marquis; Lindsey Bayer

  Tanner holstered his weapon and rubbed the back of his neck. He wondered if Harmony was spewing all that techno-speak to impress him. “Ambient what? Are you making that shit up?”

  “No, monkey man, I’m not. I’m making an educated guess based on the information right in front of me. I also analyzed the carbon date residue of the blast burns. They appear to be close to three weeks old.”

  He shook his head and chuckled. This chick is something else. But she had a point, only pirates took credit for this kind of destruction, and murder was certainly consistent with how most operated. Pirates weren’t a common problem in this sector, but not unheard of either. They traveled widely, going anywhere there might be profit. Small businesses like this one were usually easy prey for them. Blast in, kill everyone so no one would be able to identify them, and quietly slip away. If it wasn’t for the android enforcement patrols, they’d be much more of a threat.

  “Did you send a distress signal to alert the patrols?”

  “Are you insane? Of course not,” she said. “They’ll want to lock everything down for evidence. I want my ship before all hell breaks loose. I’ll trip the distress beacon on our way out the door.”

  Harmony’s ship was located at the far end of the station at Docking Bay Four. Retrieving a slender scan card, she rubbed the strip with her thumb, praying to any god that would listen that her ship was all right. She was hoping the pirates might have overlooked an older ship like the Crysus XG150; it wasn’t worth anything on the black market. That was part of the reason she stuck with such an old model—most people wouldn’t waste their time scavenging parts off an antique ship.

  She reached the door and slid the card into the lock. The hinge groaned open. The moment she stepped over the threshold the room filled with a dull yellow light.

  “Oh, that’s just great,” she said to no one in particular.

  Her ship had been stripped, all right. Well, more like vandalized. Most of the engine doors hung open, and there was a pool of blue hydraulic fluid on the floor beneath the cockpit. Shit! Shit! Shit! She walked up to the vessel in stunned disbelief and turned on her flashlight. Inspecting the hull inch by inch she made a mental note of everything that had been taken. She dipped her head into the main engine compartment and noticed the fuel converter was gone. Oh, that’s going to be expensive. A loud shrill whistle echo off the walls and she hit her head pulling it out. It was Tanner. She fumed at him for startling her.

  “What a fucking mess.”

  Harmony hated the hint of smugness in his voice. She pulled a rag from her pocket and wiped her hands off. “Yes, I can see that.”

  He stalked up with a mocking grin. “Good thing you didn’t send me off, huh?”

  “Yes, it’s a very good thing. Do you have any spare parts on your ship?”

  “For a Crysus?” He stepped around her, deliberately brushing her arm with his chest. He ducked his head in the engine compartment. Placing his hand over hers, he took her flashlight.

  A tiny thrill ran up her hand from the contact but she did her best to ignore it. Calm down. Even if he was a good lay, it’s still him.

  Tanner looked around for a moment. “Well, I might have some of this stuff. But I don’t have a fuel converter, I can tell you that. I don’t have titanium cooling lines either.”

  Harmony was so angry she had to walk away. If Tanner started teasing her she would completely lose her cool. She moved to the rear of the ship and paced for a few minutes, thinking. There was nothing else to do, she had to tow the ship back to Galaxy Recovery. That meant asking Tanner for yet another favor. Except for the sex, this was turning out to be a very aggravating day.

  She turned to him. He was standing there, leaning against her vessel. He seemed to know what was coming and she was sure he couldn’t wait. Harmony squared her shoulders and marched up to him, burying her pride. “Tanner, will you tow my ship back to Recovery?”

  “What?” He leaned forward and cupped his hand behind his ear as if he hadn’t heard her.

  “Do we have to play this?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t hear what you said.”

  Harmony puffed out her cheeks and let the air out her lips slowly. “Will you please tow my ship back to recovery?”

  “Make me want to.”

  If he thought he was going to win this sadistic little game, he was sadly mistaken. She placed her hands on his broad chest and caressed them up over his dark T-shirt. Then she took his face in her hands. She licked her lips and pulled him down into her most seductive kiss, all drifting steam and tender heat. Tanner wrapped his arms around her torso and embraced her. Harmony pushed her advantage, slipped her tongue into his mouth to find and caress his. Pulling from a hidden place in her heart, she infused the kiss with a passion she hadn’t felt in years. She was drowning in this sticky sweet desire and it took all of her will to break off.

  Finally she backed away. She ran the back of her hand over her lips self-consciously and avoided his gaze. “There, how was that?”

  Tanner responded by grabbing her and crushing her against him. He tried to claim her mouth again but she turned her face away from him. Frustrated, he took her hand and placed it over his impressive erection. “That’s how it was.” The words came out as a primal growl, his voice hoarse with need.

  Harmony squeezed his cock in warning. “Let me go.”

  He let her go, frowning, and pushed her away.

  Afraid he would renege on their deal, she said, “If you want more, I’ll give it to you. But only when we get my ship back in one piece. Okay?”

  His eyes darkened like clouds just before a storm. “I guess it will have to be, won’t it?”

  Chapter Seven

  Tanner sat in the cockpit of the Aries with his boots propped up on the control panel, waiting for Harmony to finish checking the tow connection between their ships. He’d been waiting for over an hour, dozing here and there, calling her on the comm. every fifteen minutes to check her progress. Each call was answered with a patient, although much too detailed, update on where she was with the connection. Of course he wasn’t surprised. He’d known when she asked him to tow her ship back it was going to take much longer than it should. It seemed that everything with Harmony was an intricate project that took much too long.

  In his forty-two years, Tanner had met a lot of control freaks but Harmony certainly was a cake stealer. He hesitated to call her obsessive, but the word was closer to the truth than not. Every damn thing had to be just right. There was no okay with her, it was either right or wrong and she’d stick with it until it was right. He was beginning to think she had a mental disorder.

  Most hunters were about results, not details. But he guessed that to Harmony, the details got her better results, so she’d sweat them no matter how long it took her.

  That was Harmony, smart to a fault. He’d once sneaked a peek at her personnel file and knew she had enough education to take a fistful of white-collar jobs that not only paid better, but were a whole lot safer. He wondered what drove an attractive woman like her to keep doing this lonely and dangerous job. Now that had to be a good story.

  Harmony defied every notion of what a bounty hunter was. Underneath that cool, sexy exterior she was all college professor. Most shady people in this profession might have dismissed the five-foot-six hunter out of hand as an obsessive kook, but she had one major draw that even Tanner couldn’t deny.

  She was one hundred percent successful.

  In fact, she was legendary for it. If you gave Harmony Knox a bounty, she was going to get your fugitive for you, no matter what.

  But now, with the escape of Prime, her perfect capture record had suffered a major ding. Not only had she not been able to catch the giant roach-like alien, but she’d also had the bad luck to end up in jail. Even he would have been rethinking a new career after spending a year as a guest of the AEssyrians.

  He shifted his position and lifted the comm. to his mouth. “Harmony, what the fuck?”


  “Just hold on a minute. I’m almost done.” Her tone carried a blade of frustration. “You could have helped me.”

  “I tried. Remember? You kept bitching I was doing everything wrong.”

  “I know. I know. But you were doing everything wrong. If you had just listened to me and done what I told you we could have been finished by now.”

  Tanner shut off the comm. and rocked his chair back and forth, bored. Closing his eyes, he let his mind drift back to the delicious heat of her body. He licked his lips and rubbed the outside of his pants. Just the thought of her made his cock stiffen. Lost in the relaxing hum of his ship’s engines, he vividly recalled the perfumed musk of her sex and the fiery pleasure they’d shared. A brazen lust was born within him, something wild, savage and controlling. He wanted her here, in this space with him, her long brown hair twisted in his fist as he devoured her on the hard steel floor.

  But then he reminded himself that she was one of them. A flash of memory from his enslavement bombarded his mind; it was a cold night and he was refusing to fight. So his captors chained him to a wood post and sprayed him with a high-pressure water cannon for hours. He trembled, still feeling the frosty bite of that water on his exposed flesh. He rubbed his eyes and shuddered, banishing the memory. God, how he hated Kirillians. But soon he’d have some payback for all his suffering. All he had to do was be patient.

  A buzzer sounded on the control panel and he was shaken from his thoughts. He hit the release switch and watched the monitor as the hatch opened. Rising from his chair, he stretched, then went down the ramp to help her and secure the hatch for takeoff.

  Harmony came up the ramp with a leather pack slung over her right shoulder. Her long, lean body looked good in her black tank top and dark combat pants. All he could think about was how good she would feel in his arms. She bounded into the ship like a teenager back from a date and passed very close to him. A whiff of her hair made his cock even harder. He coded the hatch’s lockdown sequence and followed her into the cockpit.

  She stowed her backpack and placed it in a locking storage bin, taking a moment to fasten the mechanism. Then she sat at the mainframe and turned her attention to the ship’s computer. He leaned against the bulkhead, folded his arms and watched her without uttering a word. Although he wouldn’t have called her beautiful exactly, Harmony was a very attractive woman. Her sexuality had an honest simplicity; there was no shame or guilt in what they’d shared. She’d needed an itch scratched and he’d done her a service. No more or less important than towing her ship.

  Being so attracted to her surprised Tanner. With few exceptions, he had always been the one in control. It annoyed him to admit he wanted her a lot more than she wanted, or needed, him. But if he played this right, that would soon change. He couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t able to attract the woman of his choice. And even though most of his relationships didn’t last long, he was the one to start and end them. And this one would be no different.

  Harmony continued to ignore him. She dispatched commands into the console with impressive speed.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I’m inputting the code for the tractor beam.”

  “How much longer is this going to take?”

  She selected a few more files from the floating stage and stood up, throwing her hands in the air like the ringleader of a circus. “There, I’m done. Now we can cruise through space at your leisure without losing my ship.”

  “Good.” Tanner sat down in the captain’s chair and input their course back to Galaxy Recovery. When he glanced back at her, she was on the tracker again, working. She’s such a crazy Kirillian pain in the ass.

  Patience. Soon you’ll have the joy of feeding her your vengeance, one tiny morsel at a time.

  Chapter Eight

  Harmony spent the next few hours getting leads on Prime. She was so engrossed she hardly gave Tanner a thought. He’d set the ship on autopilot and occupied himself by playing an old game of poker on the ship’s portable computer. When he won a round, which was about every five hands or so, an animated naked woman would come out and do a little dance for him.

  The strange things that occupy men.

  But the harder she worked, the more she felt guilty about neglecting him. After all, he had been somewhat patient in waiting for her at the storage facility. She glanced over. Tanner sat slumped in his seat like a sullen teenager. He played the poker game over and over again, quite obviously bored stiff. She really should do something nice for him so he didn’t get too surly. After all, she was grateful for his help. He could have easily just dumped her at Rick’s and taken off. If he had, she would still be sitting there waiting for the authorities to arrive. Worse yet, her precious ship would have been impounded as evidence. Who knows how long it would have taken to get it back?

  Harmony put her search on hold, turned off the command stage and came over to where he sat.

  He glanced up at her, annoyed. “What?” he said, returning his attention to the game. The animated dancer on the screen had turned her back and was shaking her butt at him. Without a word, Harmony knelt before him and rested her hands on his thighs.

  Now she had his full attention.

  Caressing her hands up his trousers, she paused to unfasten the top button of his fly and glide the zipper down. She reached in and slipped her hand into his briefs. Her palm wrapped around his thick, gorgeous cock and pulled it out.

  Tanner watched her, transfixed. His lips parted for a soft exhale. That feral look in his eyes, the one that only hours before made him look eager to kill her, now glowed with warm affection. With an almost imperceptible twitch of his finger, he dimmed the cabin lights. Dark shadows played across the hard planes of his face, giving him a sinister look.

  “Yeah, Harmony,” he murmured in a perverse growl, “you take that cock into your beautiful, sweet mouth and suck it dry.”

  Harmony stopped. “Tanner, I really want to do this for you but I would really prefer it if you didn’t talk. I find it distracting.”

  Tanner tossed his head back and laughed. “Distracting?” He leaned forward smiling as if that word was the most incredible thing he’d ever heard. “How do you get distracted giving head? All you have to do is suck.”

  “Do you want me to do this or not?” She should have continued to neglect him. Why had she come over here anyway? He was only going to irritate her.

  “Is that a fucking trick question?”

  She stroked the length of his cock. “Then no talking.”

  Tanner leaned back and stared at her as though he’d just discovered he was dealing with a crazy woman. “Can I moan?”

  Harmony sat back on her heels. “Well, of course you can moan.” His cock stiffened even more and she wondered if the argument had turned him on. Probably; the man seemed to thrive on conflict.

  Leaning forward, she took the round tip into her mouth and licked a drop of his seed off the head with the tip of her tongue. The salty taste of his semen brought her senses to life. Gliding the rest of him into her mouth, she rested her tongue along the shaft then began working back and forth to find a comfortable rhythm.

  Tanner moaned, his deep, masculine voice tumbling off the metallic walls of the ship. He leaned farther back in the chair, his legs open wide as she reached into his trousers to cup and massage his balls. To help her get better access, he stood for a moment and lowered his trousers to the floor. They fell around his ankles in a wrinkled heap. He took his seat again and opened his legs as far as he could.

  Harmony enjoyed this new power. With every flick of her tongue and every gentle caress, Tanner relaxed more, giving himself over to her completely. Then he gripped her shoulders with such force she thought there might be something wrong. Glancing up into his face, she watched as the pleasure overtook him.

  His cock jerked inside her mouth and semen pumped onto her tongue like warm salt taffy. She swallowed it and sat back on her haunches, satisfied.

  Tanner pulled h
er up toward him. He moved forward and placed his lips over hers in a gentle, erotic kiss. He ran his fingers through her hair as he moved his tongue past her lips and into her mouth. A lusty thrill ignited her passion, making her feel reborn.

  Tanner broke the kiss and stared deep into her eyes. “You’re such a hot, sweet mess, Harmony,” he said in a harsh whisper. “Fuck me.”

  For the first time in her life, Harmony realized she was nervous. Not nervous about sleeping with him again but nervous about how raw and open her emotions were. There was something gentle in the way he spoke to her, a note of kindness in his voice that her soul drank up like parched earth. She straddled his hips but hesitated. Tanner grabbed her and crushed her against him. His big hands peeled off her tank top with primal urgency.

  Tanner covered her right breast with his mouth, circling her areola with his tongue and gently biting her nipple. His cock, semi-soft from his recent orgasm, came to life again, pressing into the valley between her legs. A rigidity within her soul softened and her heart suddenly leaped with joy. His mouth delighted her, stroking her flesh with silky warmth and loving tenderness. The pleasure was an intense rush. She wrapped her arms around his head and hugged him tightly.

  Harmony stripped off her pants and boots. She spread her legs wide and lowered herself down onto his fully erect cock. He came into her slowly, teasing his length past her wet folds until she was completely taken. With his arms around her waist, he rocked his hips into her, his feverish mouth teasing her nipples and devouring her throat.

  Pure ecstasy rolled over every nerve in her sex as she rode each thrust. The room melted away and she gave herself over to the white-hot heat that was her climax. She tilted her head back and gasped his name, marveling at how easily he could bedevil her. Then another orgasm came on the heels of the first, harder and stronger.