Stark Surrender (13 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Astra Landing was on a rooftop, ten stories tall and large enough to handle the traffic for the Quadrant. It was busy with air taxis coming and going, most disgorging either beings who appeared to be affluent citizens slumming, or raucous partiers spending credit at will. There was also an aircycle gang, but they were taking off rather than landing, so Kiri and Kai stepped out of the taxi and paid the pilot.

“You want me to wait?” the Occulan asked. “Cost you the rate minus fuel.”

“For an hour,” Kiri said. “If we’re not back by then, deliver our luggage back to where you picked us up, and the houseman will pay you extra. We’ll catch another taxi for ourselves.”

The driver waggled two eyestalks in agreement, and sat back in her seat, already cueing up a game of solitaire on her console.

The street was crowded with rowdy evening partiers and what looked like a convention of Auslerian business-folk, all inebriated. Kiri stood for a sec as her senses were assaulted from all directions. She’d only been gone for months, but she’d forgotten the noise level, the rank smells of cooking, pollution and unwashed bodies.

“Bronc and his people are right up this way,” Kai called over the cacophony.

She nodded, and followed him across the walk, dodging drunken Auslerians waggling their long probosces and chortling at their own wit. They reeked of pala wine.

“This area hasn’t gotten any prettier,” Kiri shouted in Kai’s ear as they waited for an airbus before crossing the street.

“There’s Bronc,” Kai said, pointing up the street to an open hanger, where Bronc stood talking with two other men. “C’mon.”

They threaded their way through the crowds. They had nearly reached Bronc when they passed a narrow doorway. A few steps behind Kai, Kiri paused to avoid a staggering Auslerian, looked sideways, and straight into Logan’s narrowed, deadly gaze.

Time stopped around her, the noise and confusion fading underneath her own thundering heartbeat. Her eyes widened with wonder, and her mouth dropped open. She lifted one hand toward him.

“Logan,” she breathed. Of all the millions of beings in this crowded city, she’d found him.

Then he leaned forward, grasped her outstretched arm, yanked her forcibly across the few feet of walk that separated them, and into his hard embrace.

“Kiri!” her brother yelled from out on the walkway.

“Oh,” she gasped. “Logan, you—“

“Quiet,” he rasped, and slammed the door behind her, leaving them in total darkness.

In astonishment, she lay against his hard, broad chest under the plush of leather, his arms holding her clamped to him, his heart beating under her palm, and his breath on her face.

“Logan,” she protested, struggling for breath. “You’re holding me too tight. I can’t … breathe.”

“I told you to be quiet.” His deep voice was cold as ice.

“But—but Kai,” she panted, bewildered and frightened now. “And Bronc—they’re right outside. Logan, we have to go to …”

Something damp slapped her on the side of her neck, and suddenly Kiri’s head was too heavy for her neck, her legs too wobbly to hold her up. She slumped into him, her cheek colliding with his collarbone. Then everything faded.

She didn’t feel him swing her up over his shoulder, or carry her up the narrow, stinking stairway.

* * *

Lode deposited his burden in the passenger seat of the slider, then leaned over her, one hand braced on the hatch, gazing down at her with mingled triumph and wonder. He hadn’t really expected to find her, hadn’t truly believed that she was a real woman. But here she was, the woman who haunted his dreams, nearly every night now even without the illegals.

And she was even lovelier in person. Warm, lissome and alive. She smelled of clean woman, faint perfume and new, quality clothing. Leaning closer, he dropped to one knee and pressed his face against her throat, inhaling the smell of her skin, then moved down, down, ending with his face buried between her slender thighs.

Yes … there it was, the scent of a woman’s sex. One particular woman, whom he lusted after in his dreams. Heat built low inside him, curling downward into his groin. As desire stirred, he growled deep in his throat.

He raised his head and drank in the sight of his prize. Examining her lovely face, the graceful curve of her neck and the delicate angle of her jaw, the thick ebony fringe of her lashes on her cheeks, the surprising lushness of her mouth, he smiled to himself.

He ran his hands up the curve of her hips, into the indentation of her slender waist, and palmed one of her breasts, weighing its firm resilience in his palm. Then farther up to cup his hand around her throat, collaring her with his touch.

At last, he had a woman worthy of the alpha of Astra Quadrant. And he’d keep her, even if it meant killing whoever had brought her here. Because he’d never let them take her from him.

He fastened her safety harness and strode around to slide into the pilot’s seat. In a moment, they were airborne. They slipped through the twilight past other air-vehicles to the landing pad of the apartment he shared with Liss.

The blonde stared, her mouth open, as Lode carried his dream woman inside and kicked the door shut behind him.

“Who the hells is that?” she asked, rising from the sagging divan, a comedy holovid playing on unnoticed. A wave of laughter followed a characters’ words.

“She’s mine,” he said. “She’ll be staying in my bed.”

“But—”

He stopped her protest with a look.

“Sorry, Lode.” When she subsided onto the divan, he turned away and bore his woman into his sleep cubby. He laid his burden down on the bed, and covered her with a blanket.

The patch came off her neck, leaving only a faint mark where the tiny sharps had penetrated her delicate skin. By tomorrow there would be no trace. That was good, he wouldn’t have to be careful where he put his mouth and hands on her.

Leaving her there, he went to explain to Liss how things would be.

* * *

Kiri woke slowly, swimming upward through layers of foggy sleep.

She was in a dream, a strange one, in which Logan held her in his arms again. They were both naked and it was so good. He was hot, and hard and powerful over her, his big body bearing her down in the bed, his cock a stiff, burning brand against her bare belly, his breath warm and urgent in her ear.

“Wake up,” he growled in her ear. “Wake up, and show me why I dream about you
every … fucking … night
.”

Since he punctuated these last words with surges of his groin, raking his cock over her mons, Kiri opened her eyes on a gasp of arousal.

“Logan.” She gazed up at him in baffled wonder. “It’s really you.”

It was him, but with that hard, somehow wild edge she’d seen in the holovid. He smelled of man and sweat and musk, no enhancement of spicy cologne.

His hair was longer, hanging over his forehead and around his ears, heavy locks of mink brown that shadowed his eyes in the glow of the single glowlamp. Silver eyes that bored into hers as if he would plumb her psyche. And full of molten heat.

She slid her hands up over his ribs, proving to herself he was real. He was, although too thin. She could feel each rib under his skin. But he was hot and damp under her palms, and he quivered as if her caress was the final whip to drive him over an edge.

“Yes.” He drew back and positioned the head of his cock at her opening. His free hand cupped the side of her head, and tightened. “Now—look at me when I take you.”

She met his gaze, her wide with shock, and with a single, hard lunge he thrust deep inside her.

Kiri cried out, a strangled word of discomfort, because she wasn’t ready. “
Wait
.” She needed a little time to adjust to his girth, and the way he prodded solidly against the head of her womb, which seemed swollen and ultra-sensitive.

“Don’t fight me. Need you
now
.” His grip tightened on her head, and he reached down with his other hand to pull up her leg, holding her open for him. Then he began to thrust, long hard strokes inside her that raked every nerve ending with too much power, too much heat, too much raw man… but in seconds she was dripping wet, her pussy clinging to his shaft in an ecstasy of acceptance and surrender.

He bared his teeth in fierce triumph, thrusting even harder.  “You want me.
Say it
.”

She opened her mouth to tell him what she thought of his arrogance, but instead moaned as the intensity of her need scaled higher. She more than wanted him, she needed him to go on doing exactly this, slamming into her so the bed rocked wildly under them, the air cell creaking rhythmically in its frame, and their flesh slapped together, perspiration breaking out over her skin and his until they slicked against each other.

“Say it.” He nipped her ear lobe, hard, and the little pain somehow sent her higher, her pussy beginning to spasm around him, a familiar sweet surrender already feathering through her groin.

“Logan,” she whimpered, “I want you.
Oh, yes … Logan
.”

His cock inside her was the only reality, ecstasy imploding deep around it, and then shooting outward through her body.

“Yes,”
he
shouted, “Yes.
Mine
.” He stiffened in her arms, and heat flooded her pussy as he came, shuddering so deeply the bed shook with them. Then he collapsed on her, a heavy, hot, sweating weight, his breath thundering in her ear.

Kiri held him, little aftershocks of pleasure still pulsing from where she clasped him inside her.

But slowly, she came back to herself. She opened her eyes, and gave him a little shove. “Logan, move please. I need to—breathe.”

He grunted, then lifted his head and leaned on one elbow, still inside her. His face was flushed, damp, his eyes glittering with purely male satisfaction as he surveyed her face and bare breasts.

“You’re one hells of a hot fuck, woman. You must be part Tyger. From now on, you’ll stay in my bed—here whenever I want you.”

Chapter Fifteen

Logan Stark had gone completely and totally rezzed.

That was the only explanation Kiri could find for the man who stood between her and the door of the tiny bedroom. Feet planted apart, hands open at his sides, shoulders set in a way that said he was ready for anything, he stared down at her with the icy, feral gaze of a stranger.

He’d pulled on a pair of soft pants, but they hung from his lean hips, baring the twin creases that pointed in and down toward his genitals, outlined by the thin pants. And she’d been right, he’d lost weight. His face was drawn, the bones of his shoulders delineated as never before, and his abdomen below his ribs was hollowed.

“What do you mean, I’ll stay here with you?” she demanded, her voice cracking the way it always did at the wrong moment. She fisted her hands in the black-and-gold satin coverlet, the single barrier between her and the chill of the room, hating that she’d given away her feelings even that much.

Of course she’d also been screaming his name a few moments ago, and hanging onto him with both arms and legs, begging him to take her. She hadn’t been trying to hide anything then.

“Logan, please. We need to go back to the penthouse. They’ll be frantic, worrying about both of us.”

She couldn’t believe he’d brought her to this tiny, shabby apartment, chilly and damp. Why here instead of joining Bronc, Kai and her, returning with them, explaining what he was up to, and accepting their help?

“This is … still New Seattle, right?” she asked.

He nodded, eyeing her with satisfaction. “I didn’t think you were real,” he muttered, as if to himself. “Thought you were just a dream. But when I undressed you, I already knew what you looked like. You’re mine. I’m keeping you.”

The hair stood up on the back of her neck. “What? Logan, we can’t stay here.”

His mouth twisted up at one corner in a private smile that held no humor. “Who’s going to stop me—you?” His gaze fell to her body, outlined by the thin blanket, then traveled back up to her face, that smug gleam back in his eyes. “You’re staying.”

Kiri felt as if she were trapped in some alternate dimension, or a waking nightmare. Logan chose to stay here in this tiny, none-too-clean place instead of returning to his spacious, elegant penthouse? Surreptitiously she pinched her bare arm. It stung, but nothing else happened.

She was still sitting in the tacky, slick red sheets in which she’d just had incredibly hot sex with a man who was now behaving like a complete stranger. And now that stranger in Logan’s body stood between her and escape.

Also, she was still struggling to process her urge to escape. Once, Logan had been the one to keep her safe from this city. Now he was the one scaring the hells out of her.

“Logan, are you—are you in some kind of trouble?” she asked, keeping her voice low, so anyone in the other room couldn’t hear. “You are, aren’t you? Are you undercover in some way—pretending to be a ganger or something? Or are they forcing you to stay here?”

Maybe he was ferreting out crooked business dealings. Maybe he was locked in some competitive battle with Tal Darkrunner.

“Am I pretending?” Logan the stranger repeated, an ugly look in his eyes. “This is reality, woman. Mine, and now yours.”

“Reality,” she repeated. “For how long?”

“As long as it takes to do what I’ve come here to do.”

“And what have you come here to do, Logan?”

“You don’t need to know. And don’t call me that. I’m Lode now … Kiri.”

She raised her brows at him, trying for haughty even though she was shaking under the blanket. “Oh, I get to use my real name? Big of you.”

But why on planet did he want her to call him Lode?

An extremely unpleasant idea slithered into her mind. When they’d been together, Logan had told her casually that he had sometimes frequented exclusive clubs where one could engage in all kinds of sexual games, some that included role-playing.

He’d certainly enjoyed dominating her in bed, and using sophisticated toys on her—some in public. She’d never forget the ball they’d attended, not if she lived to be two hundred.

But no. Just no. Logan might be ruthless, but she refused to believe he was ruthless enough to leave his family and all his employees worrying about him while he played some elaborate sex game. No way. Also, he’d be taking better care of himself. He’d have a butler in here keeping this place spotless, and using heat to keep this place warm.

He gave her a strange look, then shrugged. “I heard them calling for you by name on the street.”

Her heart leaped. “
Kai
. Logan, Kai was with me when you—when you grabbed me. He’ll be worried sick. And Bronc, Joran and Creed—do you really want to leave them all just hanging, wondering how you are?”

Then she flinched backward as he straightened, his eyes narrowing, face tightening in a way that shouted danger. “This Kai,” he rasped, “Is he your man?”

Kiri gaped at him. “
What
? You know very well he’s my brother. And I want to get back to him.”

“No. You stay with me.” 

Enough of this farce. She yanked the thin coverlet from the bed, pulling it with her as she slid off the side and stood. He watched every move as she wrapped the blanket around her body, holding it under her arm on one side and over her shoulder on the other, her movements stiff with anger.

“I’m not staying,” she insisted, her heart pounding. “And I’m not playing whatever game you’re into. I want my clothes back. Then I’m leaving.”

For a long, suffocating moment, he considered her, then shifted to one side of the doorway. Beyond she could see the corner of a small sitting room, furnished with the same garish taste as the bed, and another door. One which led out of this place, hopefully.

“You want to go? Fine, but no clothing.”

Kiri growled under her breath—or maybe not under her breath, since behind the strands of unruly hair dangling over his brow, Logan’s gaze lit with unholy amusement.

He was laughing at her? She glared at him so furiously she was vaguely surprised his face didn’t begin to burn and smoke.

“Fine.” She stalked along the bed toward him. “Then I’ll go in this quarking blanket. And don’t think I won’t. You want to play your games, do so with that blonde we saw you with in the holovid. I am leaving.”

She’d look like an escapee from some jungle adventure vid with this boldly figured blanket as her cape, but who quarking cared? Also, euww—barefoot on the filthy street wasn’t going to be very pleasant.

She stepped forward to pass him, and with one swift move, he yanked the blanket away from her and tossed it back on the bed, leaving her utterly naked.

“The blanket stays here,” he drawled. “Also, not a very safe neighborhood out there for a woman, even clothed and armed with a little toy laser like the one you had in your bag. The way you are now? I’ll give you three, maybe four secs before you’re on your back in some alley, with a line of males waiting their turn between your legs, or in your pretty mouth.”

Kiri gasped at the casual cruelty of his words, and then, as laser-hot fury ignited, swung at him. But in the instant before her hand connected with his face, he caught her wrist in a hard, bruising grip.

Hauling her close, he wrapped his other arm around her, his hand claiming her bare ass. He lifted her up against him so her toes barely brushed the floor. Thrusting his face close to hers, he spoke again, his breath gusting on her face, his eyes blazing into hers.

“You hit me, and I’ll hit you back, harder. Oh, not on your pretty face, so don’t give me that look. But you use your Tyger-kitten claws on me and I’ll blister this ass with my hand till you can’t sit—and no gesics unless you ask me very nicely. You understand?”

She’d been right. Logan was completely rezzed.

Her body trembling with fear, ice in her veins, Kiri strained away from him, her mind a turmoil of confusion. His arms had once been her refuge, and part of her still wanted to burrow close to him, letting his heat and strength surround her with safety and comfort … but now there was no refuge to be found here, only a ruthless stranger who glared down at her through Logan’s eyes. What was wrong with him?

He shook her, his arms tightening. “Do you understand?” he repeated.

“I understand.”

“Good.” He relaxed his grip slightly, and fondled her ass before curving his hand down and in, his fingers delving into the crevice between her cheeks. He watched her as he probed deeper, finding first the tight rosette of her anus, and then the silky lips of her pussy, still dripping with his cum. “My woman needs to listen well.”

Kiri tried to twist away. She glared up at him, shaking with fury and fear.

“No, you need to listen. What I understand is that you are being a complete and utter bastard,
Lode
. And you can get your hand out from between my legs, because you are never getting back in there!”

“No?” he asked, and lifted her higher, three long, hard fingers delving deep inside her pussy. He stroked her with casual expertise, hitting her G-spot each time, and watching her with those cold eyes as she struggled to ignore the pleasure coalescing around his touch. God, no. Her mind might know he wasn’t the Logan she’d fallen for, but her body responded to him like a tuned instrument.

He bent his mouth to her throat, and licked a trail up the sensitive cord to her ear, where he sucked her earlobe into his mouth, and then nipped it hard.

“No!” But despite her anger, despite her fear, Kiri felt herself responding helplessly. Lately her body seemed to be a mass of hormones waiting to be set off, and this man had always been able to do so more than any other. She came, swift and hard, her arms around his neck for support as her body shuddered with delight.

Logan—or Lode, or whoever the hells this man was, pulled his hand free, wiped his wet fingers on her ass, and then slapped her there, a stinging blow that jerked her from her orgasmic haze.

“
Oh
.” She shoved at him, humiliation burning her face and down her throat. He’d spanked her. After he’d made her a liar by coming on his hand like an utter fool.

He set her on her feet and stepped back, looking her over with insulting thoroughness. “Better decide which of those you prefer, Tyger-kitten. ‘Cause I don’t mind doing either. Or both, if you like it like that.”

“Oooh, can I watch?” asked a woman’s voice from the doorway.

Kiri jerked around to find the blonde from the holovid standing there. She wore a brief red top from which her large breasts seemed ready to burst, and the red leather pants and boots that she’d worn in the surveillance holovid. A filmy red scarf held her long blonde hair back from her face.

She slithered into the room to stand at Logan’s side, one arm through his in a way that said clearly she belonged there.

“I could do the spanking for you, Lode,” she added, looking Kiri over. “I like it like that.”

Kiri held herself still and straight, refusing to quail before either Logan or his … his whatever she was. Clearly his latest woman.

“Try it and I’ll scratch your eyes out,” Kiri offered, baring her teeth at the woman. “Now why don’t you get me my clothes instead, hmm?”

The blonde’s eyes narrowed, her thick, enhanced lashes shadowing her eyes. She sneered at Kiri. “I answer to Lode, you little bitch. Any scratching will be done by me.”

Logan shook his head. “Not now, Liss. Get me something to eat, hmm? I need to head out for a while.”

Then he looked back to Kiri. “You want clothing? Earn it.”

“How?” she managed through stiff lips.

He palmed his groin, and smiled. It was not a nice smile. “You could get down on your knees for me, for starters.”

The last of her hope that this was the Logan she knew fell away, leaving Kiri cold and bereft, even as a tiny part of her remembered taking him in her mouth and making him groan with pleasure as he bucked in her hands, and loving it.

She shook her head, biting her lips to still their quivering. Right now she hated him more than she would’ve thought possible. Turning away, she grabbed the blanket again, dragging it around her with her back to him. “I’ll do without, thanks.”

Then she walked as far away from him as she could get in the small room and sat on the edge of the bed. He laughed to himself, and she heard the rustling of clothing and slap of leather as he dressed.

Kiri huddled in the blanket, gaze on the shabby wall in front of her. Oh, God, what was she going to do? She’d fallen into a nightmare, and she had no idea how to—wait. She lifted her hand to her ear. Her com. As soon as Logan, or Lode left the room, she’d call for help.

“Oh, and don’t try linking anyone to come and rescue you, Tyger,” he said behind her. “I’ll kill them the moment they approach the building.”

She jerked around, staring at him in horror. He stared back, the icy gray of his eyes revealing the cold truth of his intent. Slowly, keeping him in her sights, Kiri slid back against the wall at the head of the bed and drew her blanket-wrapped knees up before her, watching him from their dubious shelter. Her insides were ice, her limbs trembling under the blanket.

Logan—this Logan—would really kill to keep her a prisoner?