Captive of Pleasure; the Space Pirate's Woman (The LodeStar Series) (26 page)

He felt her suck in a sob, and then let it loose, and he stilled, stroking her gently. “Now, are you gonna disobey me again?” he asked.

“No,” she gritted.

“No...?” he prompted.

She jerked around, glaring at him over her shoulder through tear-drenched eyes, her face flushed, lips pouted.

“Just
no
,” she bit out again. “No more calling you ‘Master’. That is
your
punishment, Joran Stark.”

“Well, hells. Didn’t see that one coming.” He let her up, but then pulled her to him on her knees and held her there while he pulled her panties and leggings up, covering with regret what he’d uncovered, and managing to admire her sweet mons while he did so. Fuck, he wanted in there. “You’re tricky and mean, my Zaë. I like that.”

He patted her hip.

“All over,” he said. “We’re quits.” Only his cock thought it should be just the beginning. He wanted to rip her leggings off and pet and lick her until she begged him to fill her.
 

She looked down, hiding that blue fire with a posture of submission. Right. And if she had a laser, she’d be using it on his balls.
 

She was good at hiding behind a mask, he realized with a shock that hit him in the solar plexus as if he were the one wearing the collar—she was nearly as good as he was. Only while his mask was genial and careless, hers was obedient. There was a whole ‘nother Zaë under there that very few saw. She showed it to him though, and much as her feistiness annoyed him, it also made him like her, a lot. She was a little fighter.

And why did realizing this make him want to kiss that pouting lower lip and then fuck her until neither of them could move? Where had she come from, and who had trained her to be so alluring? Was she a product of some courtesan academy of some kind?
 

He discarded this notion as quickly as it came—she was too prim and proper. The allure just slipped through from time to time. The look in her eyes when she’d caught him with Fee, still made him want to curse and laugh at the same time. She hadn’t liked it, not a bit. He wasn’t too fond of the memory himself—a sharp niggle of shame jabbed him every time he recalled that night. He’d been drunk, yeah, but he wasn’t so sure he hadn’t been trying to prove to her
and
himself that having her here changed nothing.

He was still the man he was, with the most difficult and disgusting task of his life ahead. And she was still who she was, just passing through.

“You want to go for a ride tomorrow, I’ll be busy, but I can have one of the boys go with you,” he heard himself offer.
 

She pulled at his grasp. “I will decide that. It may be uncomfortable, after your punishment.”

“You want a session in the regen to take the sting out? Not tryin’ to leave marks on you, just make my point.”

“No,” she snapped.

“Fine.” He was done. He let her go, and then levered himself off the divan, already pulling his vest off, then his shirt as he headed for the showerdry. “You can call Nera for your supper, I’m out.”

He took a fast showerdry, soaping up and then using his own hand to stroke off a fast, hard orgasm, imagining it was her pussy working him, her pretty, pink ass in his hands again as he thrust inside her.
 

But it wasn’t enough.
 

He threw on a clean pair of pants and shirt, and linked Marzolle from his bedroom. “You mind company?”

Marzolle shrugged and smiled. “Of course not. You know I always have time for you, my lord.”

Zaë was nowhere in sight when he left his tont, but he knew she was near, because he checked the reading on the collar.
 

Then he went to spend some time with a woman he could trust to let him do anything he dreamed up to her luscious body, and read no more into it than friendly physical release.

And if it wasn’t what he really wanted, during round one
or
two, he didn’t let her know.

Chapter 16

Fortunately for Zaë, or so she told herself, because the floor was hard and she kept disarranging her nest of cushions and waking with various body parts twinging, Stark didn’t return to his tont until she was in her nest, and he did not insist on her sleeping in the big bed. And if she lay awake, imagining him with the lovely, sensual Marzolle, that was her private business. And never would she admit that she wept into her pillow, tears of anger, fear and frustration.
 

She dreamed that night that she was shopping again. The two blond men were at her side, smiling down at her indulgently as she chose, not the pink nightie and the flowered kimono she’d selected that day, but a child’s clothing—soft, sturdy knits and playfully embroidered woollens. She chattered to them, and they listened, smiling at each other and her.
 

But then their faces grew solemn, and they stepped back, leaving her to stand alone before an ornate door. She faced the door, her heart thumping not with physical fear, but with another kind of dread, for she knew beyond that door lay stricture and solemn ceremony. A prison, not of cerametal bars but of duty. The invisible bonds tightened until they became physical, and she couldn’t move, could only stand and fight for breath as the door slowly swung open.

She woke panting, to find herself wound in her blanket. She fought it off and lay there, the remnants of the dream bright and jagged. It had been so real. What had she been dreading?

Marriage? Or even incarceration? Maybe she hadn’t just been drugged by the slavers. Maybe she was mentally incompetent, and the two men were her keepers. She didn’t feel incompetent, but would one know?

The thump of a small, warm body on her pillow made her gasp, and then give a sob of pure relief. The mawwr was back. She curled her hand around it and tucked it under the curve of her chin, absorbing its warmth and softness, the reassurance of its purr.

“You always seem to know just when I need you, little friend,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

Now she needed the creature give her courage, because the dream and the events of the evening before had shown her she could no longer just exist here in this place, waiting for her life to be revealed and sweep her back into it. If there was something to dread there, she wanted to
know
. She wanted to be the one to decide when and how she returned to it.

Joran Stark held the power here, in his camp. Only by knowing who she was, and where she fit into the galaxy could she hope to claim her own power.
 

And, she admitted, she wanted to know exactly what it was like to let him unleash all that rampant maleness. She petted the mawwr, breathing in its scent of fresh air and sweet grass, and imagined it was Joran’s powerful body under her hand.

“I will have him. Then, I will walk away from him, the way he walks away from women with whom he shares sexual relations,” she whispered to the mawwr. “I will be just like him. I will live free and wild, if I want to.”

She swallowed hard, wishing this notion didn’t sound quite so unfamiliar. That didn’t matter. She had learned to ride a cata; she could learn to be independent too—both sexually and in the rest of her life.

***

The Storm left early the next morning, with only a terse reminder to Zaë to stay close and mind Wega. She answered with a silent nod.He eyed her skeptically, then growled her name.

“I will stay close,” she snapped. Honestly, did everything have to be verbal with him?

He glowered at her and stalked out of the tont.

She scowled as his silver cruiser lifted off and disappeared into the vault of blue sky, free as a wild hawk in flight. Where were he and his crew off to today?
 

To rescue more slaves? Perhaps even to bring home another woman to take her place? He probably saw no reason to keep her around his tont any longer. Not that she wanted to stay. Every time she remembered the spanking, she got all hot, tingly and angry all over again.
 

The man was too accustomed to having his own way. She either needed to get her memories back and deal with him on her own terms, or get out of his tont and away from his masculine charms. She wanted him, but if she acted on those urges as his ‘pet’, this would make her just another one of his women, and that burned too deep to be endured.

No, her sexual awakening would be on her terms. He would be only the first of many men for her, and so she would tell him.
 

But not until she was whole. That meant the only way forward was through whatever physical pain it took to regain her self. It was possible—she had to believe that. Trying to decide how to go about it, she sat in front of the tont in the shade of a retractable awning and played absently with the mawwr, coaxing it to chase a piece of bright yarn she filched from one of the ornate throws on the divan.
 

Part of her was ready to force her memories, but part of her was afraid. She didn’t like pain, and the pain in her head caused by attempting to remember her life was bad enough to make her shudder in memory.

A trio of children ran by, kicking a sparkling ball back and forth. She was as aimless as the ball, and nowhere near as bright, she thought moodily. She propped her chin in her hand, watching as a cruiser took off from the other end of camp and disappeared into the sky.

She remembered being on another planet, Vardos, which meant she travelled. Maybe she’d been travelling here and had been kidnapped from somewhere on this planet.
 

Nera had mentioned holovids, so Zaë brought up one about Frontiera, going on a virtual tour of Frontiera City, a settlement to the north called Adamant, the huge boreal forests that spanned much of the far side of the planet, and then the tropical regions to the south, lush and wild and lovely. However, while fascinating, none of this sparked any memories.

The holovid over, she tried to coax the surly Wega to link Riley and ask when he would be free.Wega merely swung two eye-stalks her way and stared as she continued to play her game silently.

Wega accepted her offer of lunch, and even expressed surprise at the moonberry spread Zaë had concocted, eating three pieces of bread slathered with it. But afterward, the Occulan showed that she was done with guard duty. When Ringi walked by on her way to her own tont, and offered—with a wink at Zaë—to keep an eye on Zaë for the rest of the afternoon, Wega acquiesced with clear relief.
 

“And you’ll ask Riley when I can speak with him?” Zaë called after her.

The Occulan grunted something and disappeared around a tont.
 

Well, that was unhelpful. Still, she wasn’t altogether sorry to have an excuse to put off her painful plans. And after a day with Wega, she was hungry for friendly feminine companionship.

 
Zaë watched eagerly as the other women came in to Ringi and Pede’s tont, disposing themselves on divans, cushions and the carpets, and settled down to talk, their offspring playing around them. There was Ringi and her little girl. Ruth was a heavily pregnant woman with skin dark as bitter chocolate, a fluff of auburn hair and a flashing smile. She was partnered with another woman and a man.
 

Livie, a lively brunette, lived with two men. She had a black haired baby by one and a blonde toddler by the other. Dano, the slim man with beautiful eyes who had intervened between Zaë and Fee while shopping, was with another man.
 

“We’re all partnered with Stark’s crew,” Ringi told Zaë. “Which means we stick together, and we don’t hang out with the camp hangers.”

“Camp hangers?”

“Yeah, the women who hang around, have sex wherever, whenever, with whoever.”

“Bunch of whores,” Ilya said disdainfully.

“Nothing wrong with whoring,” Livie snapped. “I did it till I met Lasher and Iao. Girl’s gotta eat.”

“You’re classy, though,” Ilya said. “Fee and her girls aren’t.”

“Except Marzolle,” Dano corrected. “That woman is sheer class.”

Ilya shot Zaë a secretive look. “Stark seems to think so.”

Zaë flinched. “Not the blonde?”

Ilya hooted. “Oh, no. The blonde bitch is Fee. She’s after Stark like a catamount stalking a deerbbit. Thinks if he fucks her often enough, he’ll make her his woman. Since she also fucks every other man who moves, why would he bring that into his tont?”

“Not gonna happen,” Livie agreed.“And Marzolle doesn’t hang with her, anyway. Hey, Zaë, where are you from?”

Before she knew it, Zaë found herself confiding in them about her loss of memory from the drugs the slavers had given her.
 

“That’s rough, girl,” Livie said. “Well, at least you landed with us, right?”

“We’re nice,” Ruth agreed with a wink, rubbing her belly as she lounged on a divan, her feet up.“Stark will keep you safe ‘til you can figure out where home is.”

“Nice? Speak for yourself,” Ilya retorted. “I’m a badass, and don’t forget it.”

Zaë laughed, then put a hand to her mouth in case this was impolite. A badass, she liked that. She would like to be a badass. Few would try to drug and kidnap the redoubtable Ilya.