“Good morning,” Taara said, summoning her best smile. “I’m Taara.”
The woman blinked. “Ohh,” she repeated, her voice rising and falling with the single syllable. “I am Lani. Welcome to LodeStone.” She looked at Creed, her gaze now bright with speculation. “Would you like me to brew the coffee?”
“Got it,” he said. “Thanks for bringing breakfast.”
Lani nodded, although she looked disappointed. “Maybe you can come over for a chat before you leave,” she said to Taara, with a hopeful smile. “Be nice to talk with another woman.”
Taara kept smiling back, because she didn’t know what else to do. “That’s so nice. Thank you.”
The woman walked away through the house, and Taara looked up at Creed. He gave her a look that said he wasn’t fooled by her, but said only, “Come in. We’ll eat.”
Taara didn’t follow him immediately. Instead she looked out over the valley. It was beautiful in its own, spare way but it was so quiet, empty of the bustle and cacophony she was accustomed to. Not to mention the buildings crowding in around, sheltering one from the rains. The light was so bright here. Unnerving.
A wave of homesickness washed over her, and she longed for her tiny apartment, for the hushed elegance of Maitresse. Which was weird, because why would anyone in her right mind miss Earth II? It was just the swiftness of the change, and the manner in which it had happened. She hated that those gangers had forced her and D to run like rats from all they’d accomplished.
Voices drifted up from below. She peered over the balcony as Lani strode away from the house, followed by a younger woman with long black hair blowing around her in the morning breeze. Her snug pink top and tights revealed a voluptuous figure, but she moved with the tight petulance of an angry child.
“Don’t see why I couldn’t stay,” she was saying, with the same sing-song intonation as Lani’s speech. “Creed would like me to serve him breakfast.”
“You will not be serving Mr. Creed anything,” Lani snapped. “He has a guest, and you will not bother them while she’s here.”
The younger woman tossed her head angrily. “Huh. We’ll see.”
“What we will see is you on a fast flight out of here, if you don’t follow directions.” Lani’s voice was tired, as if this was not the first time she’d made this threat.
Taara winced. Add a rebellious teen to the population of the place—one with a crush on Creed Forth. Lani seemed nice, though. It was good to know that she wasn’t the only woman here, but how she wished Creed’s housekeeper or whoever she was hadn’t chosen that moment to walk in.
Creed Forth been close to ... something. Maybe in another moment he would have kissed her. And then she could throw herself into a sexual liaison with him, and stop worrying about what in the galaxy she was doing so far from home, and what would happen if she didn’t perform to Logan Stark’s standards.
Her stomach growled again. First, breakfast, whatever that would be. She hoped these people didn’t subsist by chewing on forbs they harvested from local shrubs, or whole roasted creatures she’d never heard of.
She grimaced as she walked into the house.
Best to be ready for anything.
* * *
Creed stood in the big galley of his home, Lani’s breakfast set out on the table behind him, filling the air with the scents of fresh rolls, eggs and vegprotein sausages, along with that of fresh-ground coffee. He was listening to the big gleaming coffee-maker hiss as it heated water to brew a fresh pot. He had powered it up, but he was no longer paying attention..
Outside the windows, the blonde had paused, in a posture that said she was not happy. Arms wrapped around her waist—a waist that he’d had his hands on, and knew exactly how slim and firm it was—and her face tight with some negative emotion. Contemplating what? Intimacy with him, or failing to get it?
Enough of this. Since she arrived, his calm existence was shot. He’d dreamed of her, thus hadn’t slept well, and hadn’t thought once of his work. That he hadn’t slept well for the past few weeks he chose not to recall.
When she entered through the door to his left, he was ready to send her on her way.
His words froze on his tongue. She was looking at the meal laid out on the table, her eyes wide. The way she’d looked at him earlier, like she was ready to leap on him. She had appetites. Although, why did he care? She was paid to service men. Just fucking, that’s all.
“Gremel fruit,” she said happily. “And rolls.” She inhaled. Then she smiled at him, white teeth gleaming, soft lips curved up. “I love gremel. Do you know how hard it is to get fresh fruit on Earth II? Not to mention expensive.”
Creed remembered what it was like to be hungry, and to have only a tube of vegprotein to staunch his hunger. She looked like she got enough to eat, but it might not be quality food. Vegprotein was a way to stay alive, but he grimaced inwardly, remembering forcing down the thick, tasteless sludge.
“Help yourself. There’s plenty.” She could take some back on the cruiser, if she wanted.
“Thank you.”
God beyond, that smile was sweet as Jaguari honey. He looked back at the coffeemaker. “You want coffee?”
“Yes, please.” She was still looking at the food, her pink tongue slipping out to touch the corner of her mouth.
He stilled in the act of reaching for a mug. The tip of her tongue had a shallow fork in it. He’d heard of that. Meant she was part Serpentian, a race known for their sensuality and endurance. Meant she’d be strong and lithe, not as fragile as she appeared.
“Don’t wait for me,” he muttered, forcing his attention back to what he needed to focus on, namely not pouring hot coffee all over himself and the floor. “You must be hungry.” Especially since she’d emptied her stomach on his boots last night.
She walked to the table, then hesitated. “Where do you sit?”
“There.” He indicated the chair with its back to the work island, facing the windows and both entrances. She slipped into one of the other chairs.
He poured two mugs of coffee and carried them to the table, where Taara had served herself a small portion of sliced gremel fruit, and was spooning up the soft, rosy fruit. She ate daintily, small bites, chewing with her mouth closed and her posture erect.
Well brought up, Logan would say.
With his first business up and running and credit enough for a first tiny apartment, Stark made both his younger brothers sit through a series of holovids on manners and etiquette. Joran had rebelled and Logan had smacked him back into his seat.
Creed could still remember the shock on Joran’s thin face, so like Logan’s. And the fierce determination burning in Logan’s gaze.
“We’re going to be rich one day,” he’d told them. “I’m going to make us rich. So rich no one can ever take it away from us, so rich we’ll always be safe. We can go where we want, live how we want, and eat the best food, not the crap we eat now. We’ll wear the finest clothes and live on the top of the tallest skyscraper in the city if we want to, not stinking little holes like this one.
“But if we act rough, people will still look down on us. They’ll still call us street trash, the way they did when we slept in the corner of the spaceport. We’ve got to learn to act like rich people do, speak like they do, dress like they do.”
Creed had looked around the apartment, startled. It had seemed like a really nice place to him, warm and enclosed. Off the cold, wet, filthy streets. And above all else, a place where he could let his guard down, knowing only his brothers could get near him. But whatever Logan wanted, he’d do, because he was never doing anything that would make the two older youths decide he wasn’t worth the trouble to keep him.
His heart pounding, he’d smiled widely, to show that he was on board with whatever this new thing was Logan wanted him to do. “Let’s watch, Joran. I wanna be rich, don’t you?”
The two had stared at him and then laughed, their boy-men faces breaking into nearly identical looks of humo
r, eyes dancing.
Joran had grabbed Creed under one arm and dug his knuckles into the top of his head. “Yeah, I wanna be rich, little bro,” he’d said in a voice that mocked Creed, but not in a mean way. “Like that will ever really happen. But Logan’s the one with the credit, so I guess we better listen to him.”
Then they’d watched the videos, the three of them. And practiced eating their vegeprotein and drinking their bottled water with the grace and élan portrayed in the holovid. Creed had spoiled the effect more than once by breaking into snickers as Joran ate with exaggerated delicacy, his pinkie in the air, an expression of disdain on his face. But neither of the older boys had minded.
Now Creed watched his guest pick up her mug of coffee and take a sip, with the same elegance as the people in the holovids. She blinked and her delicate brows shot together as she peered into her cup.
He smiled to himself and handed her the small pitcher. He was used to that reaction to his powerful brew. “Creamer?”
“Oh, thank goodness—I mean, thank you.” She poured a large dose into her coffee, and took another sip, then sighed with pleasure. “That’s better. As good as the coffee Kiri serves.”
Creed stopped, the dish of eggs in his hand. “Kiri te Nawa?” Logan’s mistress was the only Kiri he knew, and she served coffee professionally, or had on Earth II.
Taara stilled, gaze on her coffee, dark lashes shielding her gaze. “Is that her name? I, um, I used to stop at her coffee stand sometimes. Kiri’s Kaffe, I think it’s called.”
He spooned a large mound of eggs onto his plate, and held the bowl for her. “You work the concourse at the space port?” Maybe that was where Logan had found her.
She froze, a spoonful of eggs falling onto her plate with a soft plop. Then she dropped the spoon back into the bowl with a clash and scowled at him, arching brows together, a wash of pink color across her cheekbones. “No, I don’t work the space port,” she said through her teeth. “I’m not a—a port walker.”
Creed watched her snatch a roll from the basket as if it were a stone to hurl at him. Huh. Seemed even whores—no, make that courtesans—had professional pride. Logan had said she was a lady, so maybe she worked one of the exclusive clubs he heard about. Classy bordellos, where a man or woman with enough credit could find most anything they desired.
“Sorry,” he said and meant it. “Here, have a vegsausage.”
“I don’t eat them.” She cut into the plump, whole-grain roll with dainty precision and without looking at him. She took a bite, white teeth slashing into the soft roll.
Creed lifted a hand to rub the back of his neck. Bet she’d bite him if he got too near just now.
With a mental shrug, he dug into his own breakfast, dividing his attention between the food, which was excellent, and watching her, which was also not hard. Quark, she was pretty. And when she was angry, her high, round breasts jiggled a little with the force of her movements, which was fascinating enough that he missed his mouth with a bite of egg and ended up having to scoop it off his lap, which luckily had a large cloth napkin spread on it.
“So,” she said, with an air of determined courtesy. “What do you do for recreation here?”
He chewed and swallowed a mouthful of sausage, thinking about that. “Explore. View the local wildlife, watch holovids, swim in my pool.” Spar with his robot, although he doubted she wanted to hear about that. And he watched a fair amount of Quasi-ball.
Her head jerked up, green eyes wide. “You have a pool?” she breathed. “Oh, my goddess. I’ve seen them in the travel holovids.”
He nodded, his mind full of graphic images of her, sleek and wet, in the grotto-like pool built into the back of the house. His cock, which had been in various states of stiffness since she arrived, sprang to full attention.
His mouth opened, independently of his brain and his intentions. “Maybe we could—”
Behind her, the pilot appeared in the open doorway, finger-combing her short, damp hair, eyes on the food. “Morning.”
Quark. He’d come out here to get away from people, to have space and quiet and peace, and suddenly he was surrounded by them. Creed wanted to snarl, wanted to rise up, grab Taara from her chair and throw her over his shoulder, bear her off to his pool and lock the doors after them. So no one could interrupt them. And so he could just have one swift fantasy before he sent her away.
Instead he nodded. “Morning. Breakfast?”
The pilot strode forward with alacrity. “Thanks, don’t mind if I do.”
She poured herself a mug of coffee, and slid into the chair between Taara and Creed. “Hey, rolls. And are those vegsausages?”
Creed sent the hovertray gliding closer to her. “Help yourself.”
* * *
Taara worked hard to enjoy her meal, despite the uncertainty of her position. She surely wasn’t going to get another breakfast like it any time soon, if she was being sent back to Frontiera City.
It would take a long, long time for her and Daanel to work off their debt to Logan Stark, if he let them even stay on planet. Maybe he’d have them labeled criminals or something and they’d be shipped back to Earth II in the hold of some horrible old ship like the one Kiri had been shanghaied onto. Or he’d put them to work doing manual labor to pay off their debt to him.
No, Kiri wouldn’t let him go that far, but whatever his price, it might not be pleasant.
Creed Forth seemed to take the food for granted, eating with silent concentration. He ate a lot, but then he was solid muscle and probably weighed half again as much as she did. She eyed him from under her lashes, half resentful, half longing. She even enjoyed watching him eat, for goddess’ sake. Daanel, slim as a raile serpent, ate in a desultory way, but this man was physical and fueling a powerful, efficient machine.
She blushed when he shot her a glance and caught her staring at him.
He turned to the pilot. “You’ll be taking her back to Frontiera City.”
Taara’s breakfast knotted in her belly, her last bite of roll sticking in her throat. She dropped the rest of it on her plate. It was warm, sweet and laden with nuts and dried bits of fruit, with icing drizzled over the top and down the sides. The eggs were good too, hot and savory. She’d had them a few times when the owners of Maitresse had put on breakfast buffets to celebrate a profitable quarter. But she could not force down another bite now. She wiped her sticky fingers on the napkin of nubbly recycled fabric, looking at her plate to avoid the look of surprise and dismay from the pilot. Grabbing her mug, she drained the last of her coffee, sighing as the warm liquid soothed her tight throat.
Kind of funny, in a black holish way. She’d come here with such dread, then met him and made up her mind that her task would not be quite so horrible after all, in fact it would be quite pleasant. Okay, really pleasant. Only to have him reject her.
“Well,” she murmured into the ensuing silence. “I’ll ... just go pack up my things. Meet you outside,” she added to the pilot.
Without another look at him, she rose and walked out of his kitchen, her shoulders stiff, braced against the weight of rejection and fear.
“Okay,” the pilot called around a mouthful of eggs. “Twenty minutes?”
Taara nodded without looking back.
Back in the room she’d been given for the night, she quickly repacked her bag and set it by the door. Then she stood in the middle and looked around her. The bed was still mussed, the covers trailing on the floor. Well, quarked if she would straighten it. Let him clean up after her. Or his housekeeper, anyway.
Then the end of the covers trailing on the floor twitched.
Taara froze. Who knew what kind of creatures roamed this planet? There were birds of prey, which meant there were other creatures. Of course there were, this was a temperate planet with plenty of food, water and clean air.
She took a cautious step toward the bed. If it was a serpent of some kind, she was fine with that. Another good thing about being from a planet with reptiles of all
kinds, she feared only a few. Doubtful that there were hiss vipers here.
The covers twitched again. She froze. The fabric tented outward, toward her. A dark, hairy appendage appeared, behind it the shadow of a form. Two slitted eyes glittered up at her.
A yelp of sheer terror burst from her throat. She bolted backward toward the door, and tripped on the edge of the woven rug. As she hit the door frame, the creature sprang.
She screamed.
Chapter Six
Creed drained his coffee mug and set it on the table.
The pilot had just gone out to power up her cruiser, after thanking him politely for the bed and breakfast. Her carefully neutral expression told him volumes—she thought he was a fool for sending the blonde away and a hard-ass for upsetting her.
Or maybe he was imagining this. Quarked if he knew.
What he did know was, his fine breakfast was a knot in his gut and his skin felt tight, as if some impending battle loomed. The way he got before diving in with his Zhen brethren to scour out a nest of thieves or slavers. Only this time it was caused by one small, pretty woman, whom he could subdue with one arm tied behind his back and not break a sweat.
Except that conversely, it felt like all she had to do was crook one of those dainty fingers and he’d be on his knees, begging for anything she would give him.
Sweat did break out on his skin at this, and he shuddered, digging his fingers into the cerametal frame of his chair. He would never beg for anything again—not for freedom, and certainly not for affection. She’d be gone soon, and he’d be at peace, if lonely.
Then a high, shrill scream cut through the quiet air, and he vaulted for the open door and dashed through the house to get to her, grabbing a laser from the wall as he went. She was in danger. Had pirates snuck into the compound somehow? Did a Mau have a cutter at her throat even now? Had a young gyre hawk dived in through an open window? That had happened once when they were first raising the house.
Creed of Pleasure; the Space Miner's Concubine (The LodeStar Series) Page 6