“Daughter of a hag bitch,” he said quietly, impressed at the
stealthy one’s ability. He uncrossed his arms and moved away from the wall on
which he’d been leaning. Slipping silently across the corrugated steel of the
catwalk, he melded into the shadows and pressed up against the runabout’s hull,
listening as its would-be bandit settled into the console seat.
Marin scanned the control panel of the sleek little ship and
thought she knew what each switch and button operated. Though she’d only flown
one other runabout—and that one a much less complicated model than the
celebrated Fiach—she prayed she could power this one up and get the hell off
the
Revenge
. In her agitated state of mind, the thought of being able to
open the docking bay doors to make her escape hadn’t yet occurred to her. She
was too intent on reasoning out how to activate the engaging sequence to notice
the shadow that slid into the runabout.
“Okay,” she said to herself, fingering what she thought must
be the panel that turned on the ship’s computer.
Moving stealthily, Drae slipped silently into the jump seat
at the rear of the runabout and settled back, his eyes locked on the young
woman’s back. Never would he have imagined she could power up the onboard
processor and when she did, his mouth dropped open.
“Talk to me, you beautiful piece of engineering,” Marin
drawled as her fingers flew over the computer keyboard.
Stunned when he heard the engine throb into life beneath
him, Drae’s eyes narrowed dangerously and his hands tightened on the arms of
the jump seat.
“I’m the
woman
,” Marin complimented herself as the
runabout’s engine purred like a giant cat.
The Tiogar’s lips twitched at Marin’s words and the chilly, lethal
expression that had been building in his eyes began to warm.
Running her attention over the buttons of the communication
array, Marin picked a switch she hoped was the correct one and when a recorded
voice issued from the vid com speaker above her, she grinned broadly.
“Control, this is Drae. Open bay door number five.”
Drae winced. How the hell had the wench known he’d input
that damned command? He had to mentally shake himself to keep from slapping his
forehead with his palm.
Laziness, he reminded himself with a mental kick. Pure,
unadulterated laziness and a supreme arrogance that no one other than himself
would know he’d done it. Despite the anger at his stupidity and foolhardiness,
he had to admire the woman who was sitting there gloating as an answer came
back from control.
“Bay door five opening, Captain.”
The sound of one of the titanium irises cycling open made
Drae shake his head. When the harness in which the runabout was slung dropped
away with a slight metallic clink of chain, he tensed, afraid Marin couldn’t
control the intricate craft, but the runabout didn’t even dip one inch. She was
in total control of his prize ship. Slowly, he lifted himself from the jump
seat, his amber eyes glowing.
Marin was smoothly working the controls of the Fiach. The
ship was handling effortlessly and as she backed it away from the dock and
began easing the sleek black nose around in preparation for shooting out of the
docking bay, she felt nervous sweat dripping down her temple.
She had no idea where the
Revenge
was at that moment
or how far it was until she could reach any semblance of safety. Her fingers
sped over the keyboard. Alternating between the screen and her inputting, she
called up a trajectory screen, opened a fuel capacity screen beside that one, and
then opened another window atop that with a star map of the sector.
“Iontach is pretty damned close,” she observed aloud.
Rapidly, she typed in the coordinates.
“Iontach, Captain?” Control questioned.
Marin froze, her eyes jerking back and forth across the
communication array. Tucking her lower lip between her teeth, Marin cut off all
access to the com array, reasoning that would be Drae’s overconfident
retaliation at being second-guessed.
“Captain?” came the nervous query. When there was no answer,
Control said, “Have a safe trip, sir!”
Slapping a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing aloud,
Marin settled back. “Too easy,” she said softly. “It’s just too damned easy.
Something is bound to get in the way.”
The moment his hands touched her shoulders, curling gently
over her collarbones, Marin’s heart sank as though a heavy, leaded weight had
just been hooked into it.
“Throttle up a bit more, wench,” he told her in a quiet
voice. “I wouldn’t be waltzing out of here at such a ridiculously low speed if
I was pissed at being second-guessed.”
Blood pounding in her ears, her chest feeling as though it
was being squeezed in a vise, Marin opened up the runabout and shot out of the
docking bay like a Seapánach dragon was breathing fire down her neck. She
barely felt his hands tighten on her as the G-force increased.
His fingers were caressing her shoulders, seemingly in an
attempt to massage away the iron-hard tension that had tightened her entire
body. The Tiogar’s thumbs moved in little circles on her trapezium muscles as
his fingers flexed along her collarbones. “Cut back to thirty percent,” he
advised.
Throttling back, she glanced down at the destination map
that had been plotted for Iontach and hoped he wouldn’t take notice.
“Turn the com link back on, wench,” he said in a
conversational tone that was more frightening than if he had yelled at her.
Automatically doing as he requested, she closed her eyes as
he spoke with Control.
“Excellent work, Mr. Lutz. You passed my little test,” Drae
complimented. “Now plot me a course for Oceania, if you will.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” Marin heard, recognizing relief in
Control’s voice.
Upon hearing the new coordinates, the Tiogar told Marin to
input the data.
Marin did as he instructed and when he told her to engage
the autopilot after changing course, she obeyed without so much as a blink of
her worried eyes. As soon as the autopilot was engaged, the Tiogar’s hands left
her shoulders and the console chair in which she was seated started to swivel
around.
Feeling slightly queasy, Marin wanted desperately to close
her eyes, for she feared what she would see once the chair had completed its
arc, but she forced herself to sit still, looking straight ahead of her.
It was his belt buckle that swung into view as her chair
came around to face him. The gold emblem of the Tiogar Clan—a leaping jungle
cat with claws extended—put the fear of the gods in Marin. She stared at the
buckle, unable to tear her gaze from the Draedful thing and when Drae hunkered
down in front of her, she flinched as though he had drawn back a hand to hit
her.
How he came to be wedged between her legs she would never
know, but his left knee was pressed firmly against her right thigh, his hands
on the arms of her chair, effectively pinning her in.
“Where,” he asked, locking eyes with her, “did you learn to
steal runabouts, Lady Marin?”
Unable to speak for her mouth was as dry as the low desert
dunes of Arabach on Domhan, Marin shook her head.
“You don’t know where you learned to be a thief or you don’t
want
me
to know who taught you such larceny?” he asked.
Her friend Simone’s face flitted across Marin’s mind a
second before she clamped a lid on the treacherous thought. She lifted her
chin, willing to take her own punishment without implicating another.
“Simone,” he said, his voice a tender caress.
Marin’s shoulders slumped. She should have known he’d pluck
that knowledge from her mind as easily as drawing a breath.
“A talented lady, your little revolutionary,” he quipped.
“What other tricks did that firebrand of rebellion teach you?”
“Don’t blame Simone,” she was quick to tell him. “She was
only trying to help.”
Drae’s eyebrows shot up. “Help how, wench?” he inquired.
“What possible reason could she have had to teach you how to steal a man’s
ship?”
“In case I needed to escape some…” She stopped, clamping her
lips shut lest she say something to wipe the pleasantness from his lean face.
He cocked his head to one side. “To escape what, wench? Or
should I say who? Some would-be rapist, perhaps?” he prodded.
“If the label fits, aye!” she threw at him.
The Tiogar shook his head slowly, clucking his tongue at
though at an unruly child. He sighed deeply. “You never cease to amaze me, Lady
Marin. Scared shitless of me one minute then at battle stations the next.” He
held her gaze. “Can’t make your mind up whether to slap me or fuck me, can
you?”
Marin’s eyes flared and she lashed out at him, intending to
slap the smirk from his face, but he caught her wrist in his powerful hand and
jerked her to him. She slid out of the chair, her body pressed tightly to his,
her right leg draped over his left thigh as his arms came around her back like
steel bands. The wrist he held felt as though it was shackled. Her other hand
was caught between the two of them, her palm flattened against his rock-hard
chest.
“I think it’s time we settled this, don’t you, wench?” he
asked, his face only inches from hers.
Her body shivering from his tight, imprisoning embrace,
warmth curling in the lower part of her belly as ripples of need traveled
through her, her nipples tingling with an ache she could not explain. Marin
could only stare into the golden depths of his eyes as his lips slanted
slowly—possessively—across hers in a kiss she felt to the tips of her toes.
One moment she was kneeling there on the bridge of the
runabout with him and the next he was lowering her to her back, his powerful
body lying atop hers, his mouth still clinging to hers. When she was stretched
out beneath him, he lifted his head, breaking the kiss.
“I will not wait until we get back to the
Revenge
,”
he said in a husky voice. “Before we go another click, you will be mine.”
“The ship…”
“Is on autopilot and a Fiach is built by superior craftsmen.
It will warn us if something comes up,” he stated.
Falling into the passionate depths of his aureolin gaze,
Marin could feel a deep throbbing between her legs. She wanted the man poised
above her, his lower body pressed intimately against her own. She was glorying
in the weight of him lying atop her. She needed to know what mysteries lurked
beneath the heated eyes that were devouring her.
No words were necessary for Taegin Drae. He leaned to one
side and reached up to grasp the zipper of Marin’s jumpsuit between his thumb
and middle finger. Slowly he opened her garment, his index finger trailing down
her flesh as the zipper lowered.
Marin shivered beneath his touch. She made no move to stop
him as he lifted her upper body from the floor and peeled the jumpsuit from her
shoulders and arms. The warmth of the floor—the titanium sheath lying just
above the powerful Tappas engine—and the steady vibration felt good against her
back. Nor did she protest when he slid the jumpsuit down her legs, slipping off
her canvas prisoner’s slip-ons before removing the garment.
She lay there, her chest heaving, quivering as his hooded
attention shifted slowly over her body.
“You are so beautiful,” he whispered.
Marin did not react when he unhooked the front closure of
her bra and laid the two panels aside.
“So very beautiful,” he said, and his voice was a mere
breath of sound.
He lowered his head and captured one hard little nipple
between his lips, flicking his tongue over the pebbly surface before drawing it
deeply into his mouth to suckle her.
Marin closed her eyes and gave in to the delicious tingling
that spread across her chest. She lay there like a sacrificial lamb, feeling
the hardness of his fleshy sword pressing against her thigh.
His hands roamed over her flesh—down her sides, over her
belly, along her hip. He cupped her sex with a hot palm that brought a groan of
pleasure from her lips.
“Do you still want me to make love to you, Marin?” he
whispered.
“Aye,” she answered, barely able to get that one word out.
One long, hard finger slid into her moistness and Marin
writhed beneath that sweet invasion. Her eyes flew open and she looked in a
golden gaze that was burning with passion.
“This isn’t rape, wench,” he said, his finger moving in and
out of her.
“No,” she agreed, licking her dry lips.
“This is a claiming of what is already mine,” he said,
easing his hand from her.
Marin moaned for he had started an itch inside her that was
building, aching to be eased. When he rolled off her, she wanted to scream with
frustration.
She watched him get slowly to his feet and only blinked as
he tore the shirt from his chest, the black buttons popping off, the silk
material rending with a satisfying sound that brought another ripple of heat
surging through her belly. When he yanked off his boots and tossed them away
carelessly, she sucked in her breath, heard the blood rushing against her ears.
The britches too were shoved down his lean hips and tossed
aside, freeing his straining erection, the tip of which was pearled with love
juice.
She looked away from the jutting evidence of his arousal,
her face turning hot, but she had enough presence of mind to welcome him atop
her, her thighs parting as he wedged himself between them. The back of his hand
was at her groin as he positioned himself at her entrance and she felt her womb
leap with anticipation.
“Do you still fear me, wench?” he asked.
Marin gave him a searching look, her eyes taking in his
handsome features, delving into the gaze coming from the windows of his soul.
“No,” she answered.
“You are not my prisoner,” he said. There was an ache in him
that could only be soothed by her trust, her acceptance of him.