by Shona Husk
Con stared. Though her hands were narrow and graceful, with long, slender fingers, they were filthy, as if she’d been finger-painting with camouflage colors. Two knuckles sported blisters.
How would the clever doctor react under pressure?
Without haste, Con reached out, gripped her right wrist and turned her hand palm up. The skin was marred with nicks and cuts, some healed, some not. “What have you done to your hands?”
“Nothing.” Under his thumb, her pulse fluttered. “Just doing my job,” she said, her lips tightly compressed.
When she took a step back, he held on, gently, but firmly. “Explain.”
The downlights shone directly on her face. From behind the glasses, furious almond eyes met his. They were a stormy gray, not the brown he’d expected.
Con’s lips curved, very slightly. Ah, now they were getting somewhere. The peasant had transgressed and the princess was pissed. It warmed his heart, truly it did.
“I work in a lab, all right? I do experiments.” She tugged, to no avail. Her cheeks had gone a dull red.
Lounging back in his chair, Con released her, taking his own sweet time. “I see.”
Her spine snapped straight. “Which do you want? Bamboo or reed?”
“Neither.” He gave her a calm smile. “I’ll just watch the others for now.”
The blood beat beneath the golden skin of her throat.
“Fine.” Scooping up the green circle, she whirled around and headed for the sulky prisoners.
Con stared. Had he thought their yellow shirts were the only bright notes in the room? A glossy dark braid, almost as thick as his wrist, hung down Kwan’s back, bouncing with the energy of her stride. Threaded through it was a scarlet ribbon.
Years ago, he’d slouched against a pock-marked wall and watched one of the gang sluts plaiting her baby sister’s hair, both of them tired and skinny, open sores around their mouths. Memory was a strange beast. He could still see the blue satin in those thin, deft fingers—a startling flash of peacock in a dirt-colored world. What had the girl paid for that small strip of something pretty? Impatiently, Con shook his head, his thumb creeping up to brush the tattoo on his neck. Past is past. Another life, another time.
Kwan bent over the prisoners’ table, doling out basket bases, still talking in that funny, low, deep voice. The plait swayed with her movements like a bell-rope begging to be rung. If he tugged the ribbon loose, let the glossy strands unravel, her hair would cover her ass. Speaking of which …
Con took a leisurely survey of the good doctor’s rear. Nice, what he could see of it, pert rather than lush. The gang toughs would have sneered and called her a long bitch. She was tall—the top of her head would come to his chin, he judged—with long, slender limbs, a long straight nose, long-lidded eyes concealed by a forest of dark lashes. For god’s sake, he could snap the woman in half without raising a sweat. He tapped an irritated forefinger on his portacomp. Con liked females who gave as good as they got, women with meat on their bones who’d meet him more than halfway, in bed and out of it.
Now she was working with one of the older female techs, nimble fingers manipulating the reeds into patterns, talking, talking. When the woman made a pleasant comment and took over the task, Kwan stood back, smiling. But her lips barely curved, as if she didn’t dare trust herself with too much pleasure. He couldn’t imagine her laughing. Hell, he couldn’t imagine her in the throes of any kind of passion. It just didn’t … compute.
Intelligence, self-discipline, iron-fisted control. Kwan wasn’t the only one on the Siren with those particular qualities—take himself, for instance—but when you tossed in the scientific qualifications and access to a fully equipped lab, the doctor was a class of her own. She had the knowhow, the equipment and the sheer class to shrug off suspicion. There were other leads, true, but Christ, he liked her for it.
He needed to talk to the military police—to Sandy—asap. Not that he intended to be left out of the bust. No way, not with the thieving bastards laughing behind his back. He’d been a quartermaster virtually all his life, right from the gang days. Even as a kid, he’d managed miracles, scrounging, improvising, bartering. It was what he did. No one—no one—stole supplies from Con Madison and lived to tell the tale.
With some difficulty, he suppressed a growl. He glared down at the pharmaceutical specifications he’d brought up on screen. It took the right ingredients and the right processes to cook up the aphrodisiac rape drug commonly known as sexmeth. He hadn't been to Switzerland like Kwan, his college campus had been the broken concrete canyons of greater Chicago, his frat house a dark warren off an abandoned subway tunnel. A gang rat’s education wasn’t much, but military training had plugged the gaps well enough for him to work out the basics. He flipped back to the manifests he’d spent the last twenty-four hours checking and cross-checking. The two small freeze pods of genetically engineered mushcali he could understand, even the antibiotic capsules and morphine derivatives, but why steal soyroom spores? What did she—they—need dried fungus for?
He caught a sidelong flash of the doctor’s light eyes as she removed the spectacles and polished them with her handy rag. Strange. Yeah, very strange. There was something …
Still thinking, he scrolled back to Kwan’s record—genocode, medical information, personal history. What had he missed? Blood pressure, lungs, muscle tone, reflexes—she was an impressively healthy specimen. Contraceptive implant with preventatives for disease, check. She wouldn’t be spawning little drug runners any time soon.
Wait a—
Con’s lips tucked up at the corners. Daddy Kwan had paid for corneal surgery to correct myopia when the princess was but a slip of a girl. So why the glasses? What did the good doctor have to hide?
He had himself a quarry—now to hunt her down. Luxuriously, he stretched his long legs under the table. Took him right back to the bad old days.
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About the Author
Shona Husk lives in Western Australia at the edge of the Indian Ocean. Blessed with a lively imagination she spent most of her childhood making up stories. As an adult she discovered romance novels and hasn’t looked back. Drawing on history and myth, she writes about heroes who are armed and dangerous but have a heart of gold—sometimes literally.
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With stories ranging from sensual to scorching, she writes paranormal, fantasy, sci-fi and contemporary romance. You can find out more at
Newsletter: http://mad.ly/signups/119074/join
@ShonaHusk
shonahusk
www.shonahusk.com
[email protected]
Other titles by Shona Husk
Contemporary Romance
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Secret Confessions: Housewives of Sydney—Meagan
Secret Confessions: Backstage—Kelly
In the Spotlight
Diving into Trouble
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Face the Music
Out of Rhythm, Out of Place, Out of Time, Out of Chances
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Fantasy Romance
Arcane series:
Dark Vow #1 and Dark Secrets #2
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Warrior Queen
How to Breathe Fire
Saved by the Trickster
Servant of the Forest
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Sci-fi Romance
Hungry Touch
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Decadent Moon series:
Lunar Exposure #1, Lunar Reunion #2, Lunar Dancer #3
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Dirty Sexy Space series (written with Mel Teshco and Denise Rossetti):
Yours to Command, Mine to Hold, Ours to Save
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Takamo Universe
For God and Mars
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Paranormal Romance
Blood and Silver
Lady of Silver #1, Warrior of Fire #2, Maid of Ice #3
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Shadowlands series:
The Summons #0
.5, The Goblin King #1,
Kiss of the Goblin Prince #2,
For the Love of a Goblin Warrior #3
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Court of Annwyn series:
The Outcast Prince #1, Lord of the Hunt #2,
The Changeling Soldier #2.5, To Love a King #3,
The Tenth Life of Vicki Torres #3.5, The Darkling Lord #4
Singer of Death #5, Taming the Assassin #6
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Bitten Backstage series:
Kissing Phoenix #1, Tasting Thanatos #2,
Sharing Sirius #3, Enchanting Absinthe #4
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In a Bottle series:
Boyfriend in a Bottle, Temptation in a Bottle,
Lover in a Bottle
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Brightwater Blood
Ruby’s Ghost
An Elemental Tail
Midsummer’s Eve
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