Creed of Pleasure; the Space Miner's Concubine (The LodeStar Series) (6 page)

He’d built his house on the lower slopes of the mountain, with one range of peaks rising behind and another across the valley. The house blended in with its surroundings, neutral hues and shapes that echoed the blunt squared rocks of the bluffs over the river. Inside, it was spare but luxurious, with chairs and sofas big enough for a man to sprawl out in and room for all his activities and then some.

He’d added guest rooms, because Logan and Joran visited. Sometimes he had other guests. Stone Masterson and his pilot had stopped more than once, and irridium buyers made the trip to see where the coveted ore came from.
 

All the guest rooms were at the other end of the house from his, because he wanted his space private. Even with several visitors, he could close the door to his suite and have his bedroom, meditation room, study and lav to himself.
 

But this was the first time he’d had two single women under his roof. The pilot, he discounted. She worked for Stark, and anyhow he was pretty sure she was gay. Like having another man here.
 

Taara, on the other hand ... he could feel her presence vibrating like a vein of ore on the other end of a test drill. Exciting, alluring, beckoning him to the glittering core of her.

He needed to get her out of here.
 

He’d send her back with the cruiser, back to wherever Stark had found her. Give her some credit. He didn’t want her to lose out just because he wasn’t interested in availing himself of her services. Sex work was honest labor, just like anything else. With vaccinations for STIs and pregnancy, it was a viable career choice.
 

Although it was dangerous, since it involved physical contact of the most intimate kind, often in privacy.
 

 
He scowled into the darkness, his hands clenching on the light sheet that covered him. What was she doing, exposing herself to danger like this? Taara was so delicate. He was a male, much larger than her, in top physical condition. If he lost control, he could hurt or even kill her and who would know, unless she was implanted with a microchip or wore a monitor of some kind? Like many Frontierans, he’d had his comlink surgically implanted over his left ear. From what he’d seen, she had not.

Surely there was some other way she could earn a living. He’d give her enough credit she didn’t have to barter her body any longer, and she could set herself up doing ... whatever she wanted.
 

And he’d never have to see her again.
 

Jack-knifing up, Creed slid out off his bed and pulled his loose, soft pants up around his waist, fastening them as he walked over to open the sliding door, and step out onto the balcony.
 

He leaned his hands on the railing, the cool night breeze ruffling his hair and cooling his hot, damp skin. He looked out across the valley, a place of shadows in the brilliant starlight. The sky held a panoply of stars, and although two of Frontiera’s moons were down, the nearest one hung in a huge silver crescent over the southern horizon.

This moon shone with silver promise, but it was out of reach. Like her. He wanted to do more than look at her. He wanted to touch her ... with his hands, with his body. Wanted to bury himself in her like a weapon in a sheath, wanted to drive himself into her endlessly, again and again, in every position he could dream up, holding on until he was sated and drunk on her ... if he could ever get enough to reach that state.
 

His heart pounded hard, his breath deep and swift, his cock rigid with need in his soft pants, his hands clenched on the railing. Woman, female, softness and warmth, yielding and enveloping. He wanted her so badly he feared she’d swallow him up, never release him.
 

And that would be a cloak that contained no calm, no control for him. This, he could admit here in the dark of the night, was what he feared. That emotion, lust and need, should he loose them in himself, would destroy him, overpowering him and flinging him at a woman’s feet, at her mercy. That he would need so much and so powerfully that he’d give anything, do anything to possess her, to keep her.

Logan and Joran had rescued him from poverty and chaos, but not before he’d suffered. They’d given him safety, care and enough to eat, sent him to school and forced him to stay there until he graduated, then given him a place in Logan’s burgeoning business. They’d given him, without saying the words, love.
 

But he’d craved something apart from the busyness of commerce. He didn’t care about wealth and power like Logan did. He didn’t feel at ease with females, the way Joran did.

He’d found his something more in a chance meeting with the Zhen-Lou, when they streamed into the New Seattle docks like a healing wind and showed him that anger, even rage could be channeled, used for good instead of merely destruction. They’d cleaned out a nest of drug peddlers and other lowlifes. He’d witnessed the swift, brutal reckoning, then followed the cadre of quiet, lethal warriors to their lodgings and waited in the café, heart pounding, until one of them turned and looked at him, then beckoned him to their table.
 

Creed had been eighteen. The absolute confidence, their physical grace and discipline, the simplicity of their clothing and the daring with which these warriors accomplished what the local police had failed to do, sealed his future like a garment settling into place.
 

He wanted a life in which he was in control, in which he saw a wrong and righted it, and did so while holding himself apart from the suffering around him. And apart from the messy, confusing emotions that accompanied his urges toward the opposite sex. Females were too soft, too fragile. They let emotions guide them. Maybe that worked for them, but he wanted no part of it, couldn’t emulate their openness.
 

The intense, constant training he received and the meditations he was taught as a Zhen Lou warrior monk calmed the chaos and allowed him to live a life that was hard but simple, direct and satisfying.

But for a long time now, he’d been unable to ignore that side of himself any longer. Yearning for physical passion had been working in him like a ferment, growing and churning until he feared it would overtake him. And if he let that become important, who knew what darker urges he’d loose. Men killed for lust, for possession of their lover of choice.
 

Shadows moved in the valley below. A herd of skrog grazed slowly along the river across the valley, the huge omnivores moving together. Nearer, a catamount slipped along from one shadow to another, tail curling behind as it trailed the scent of prey. A low
mrrow
signaled its mate waiting somewhere ahead.
 

A winged shadow slipped from the sky and dove, a small squeak sounding as a gyre hawk caught a rock rat or other small prey in its claws. It rose again with flapping wings, to meet another hawk circling.

All the wild creatures had mates. A wave of cold rolled up through Creed. Loneliness. His arms shook as he gripped the railing and his head bowed under the weight of it. He’d been alone for so long. He had his brothers, a few friends, the people who worked for him, but no one to call his own.
 

Only twenty-eight years old, and he felt like an ancient soul. Like the Lost Warriors, wandering the stars in search of their treasure, the fabled Phoenixes, but never finding them.
 

He forced himself to let go of the railing, and sank down on the mat kept laid out on the balcony floor. Kneeling, he placed his hands on his knees, palms down, and concentrated.
 

Slowly, under protest, but at last bowing to his training, his emotions folded in on themselves and receded deep within him, replaced by calm. His arousal faded. Only then did he let his mind open.

His memories carried him back, to another kneeling mat, at the monastery at Zhen-Lau.

Before him, cross-legged on a dais, sat the Zhen master, Zhou-way, ‘he who takes the wind’. Though the old monk’s face was seamed with decades, his body was taut and lean.

At Creed’s side was a pack, with his weapons, mealpacs and one change of clothing.

‘You leave us now, young Creed. Go, take what we have taught, as you make your way in the world. But know, your demons will follow you.’

Creed bowed to show respect. ‘I can fight them off, master, with the weapons you’ve given me.’
 

He’d learned self-discipline, not only of the body but of the mind, a self-possession that his older brother Joran called eerie. Creed called it good. Never again would he be at the mercy of lust, rage, or fear and those who tried to wreak it.

Master Zhou shook his head, his gaze keen. ‘No, you mistake my meaning. They are
your
demons, Creed. They have no choice but to follow you, until you are ready to release their chains and set them free.’

Now Creed rose from his mat, pushing to his feet in a graceful movement. His skin prickled as if a ghostly hand brushed across his shoulders.
 

In crafting his new life, including this frontier fortress, had he truly kept his demons at bay, or were they trapped inside with him?
 

* * *

Creed woke quickly as was his habit, instantly alert. Morning now, the pure golden light edging in his windows. One that he normally didn’t take time to enjoy. When his eyes opened in the morning, he was out of bed and into action. A workout, a showerdry, then breakfast and coffee before he was off to the mine.

Unlike his actions every other morning, however, this time Creed folded one arm under his head and looked out at the pale sky, washed with lavender and gold.
 

As if he hadn’t slept, his meditation memories leapt back into his mind.
 

He’d forgotten Master Zhou’s words, until they soared from the mists of memory silently as a gyre hawk. Was the old man right? Was his self-imposed aloneness now simply loneliness, and thus useless? Had he dragged his demons along, instead of them pursuing him?

And most importantly, was it possible that it was time to release them? And could he?

Well, if he did, he’d quarking well do it in his own time. Irritation surged as he recalled Logan’s high-handedness in arranging to send him this woman. His older brother saw himself as a benevolent guardian. This latest action was so jacked, so far out of line, it took Stark well into despot territory.

Serve him right if Creed sent his beautiful whore right back to him, this morning.
 

Throwing back the coverlet, Creed sprang out of bed.
 

Without pausing for his usual stretches and isometric strengthening, followed by a fight workout with the padded droid, he stepped into his showerdry and hit the hot spray.

* * *

Taara woke with a start when something screeched outside her window. She lifted her head from the soft pillow and stared around her, her heart pounding. Where was she?

Then memory flooded back, of the torturous journey and her arrival, complete with the humiliation of vomiting on the very man she was supposed to entice. She flopped back on the pillow with a muffled whimper. Oh, goddess, Creed Forth had been so disgusted with her he’d linked Stark right away.
 

Hurt clenched her insides as she recalled his deep voice, harsh with disgust.
‘You sent me a whore?’

With an effort, she stuffed the raw memory away and looked around. She was in a big bedroom, decorated in plain, masculine brown and green. The big bed faced a large window, with shutters open to the air. Through a railing of what looked like real wood, a vault of blue was visible and below it a rugged horizon, with not a building in sight.
 

She sat up, staring. That was sky—clear blue sky, and those were mountains—real mountains, not holovid travelogue mountains. Those rugged escarpments were rock, feathered with green that flowed down their flanks to disperse in meadows of gold leaved trees and then shrubs of soft grayed green and russet. All real. All Frontiera. It was almost like being in her cherished Serpentian vista holovid.

Why, if she wanted to she could walk right out there and touch those shrubs, that tall grass, feel the ground under her feet and the sun on her head. If she had the time, that is. If she stayed here.

She’d been on Frontiera only a week, long enough to help Daanel settle the few things they’d brought with them in their new apartment in F City.
 

They’d spent the first few days simply exploring the small city, marveling not only at how clean and new everything was, but stopping to bask in the warm sun. Hot sun to many of the other immigrants, judging by the profusely sweating humans that passed them on the streets. But to Serpentians, it was heaven, especially after years of cold, acid rain in New Seattle. Taara realized now she’d never really felt warm there.

But after several days, she’d left Daanel scouting locations for his new boutique, and set off on her faux journey to Serpentia to buy clothing and accessories for the store—one which would have both their names on the deed. Daanel had insisted she be a partner with him.