Thief (23 page)

“It isn’t about money, Michael, it’s about honor and respect and—” Kraft shook her head, frustrated she could not describe what bound her to Jace Lawless. “It’s everything I stand for.”

“You don’t love him.” Michael lowered his gaze to the textured durosteel floor.

Kraft lifted a brow. “All I know is I owe him. I don’t know how to convey to you—”

“That I can’t compete.”

She wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes: Michael Parker, one of the most respected and feared men in the Void, was sulking like a child.

“This isn’t a competition. You think if not for Jace I would rush into your arms, but I wouldn’t. We burned up all the white fire-bright passion between us. Jace or no, I wouldn’t jump into your bed again.” She took a long breath. “I’m also starting to suspect you only want me because you think he does.”

Michael straightened, regaining his air of authority. “And what of Jace Lawless, Captain of
Mutiny
, the rust bucket you’re calling home now? As, of all things, a cook-whore?” Michael seemed to be furious that she’d allowed herself to be put in such a position.

“I don’t owe you an explanation for anything.” Despite her scantily-clad state, Kraft lifted her head with the dignity of a queen.

“He claims you cook yet refuses you whore.”

“Your point is what, Michael?”

Michael lifted his gaze to the guard station. “What do you think your honorable captain would do if I offered him 15Mil for a cook-whore he paid fifteen hundred for?”

Kraft wondered how Michael knew how much Jace paid for her. “You already tried it, didn’t you?” A dull fury burned in Michael’s eyes, confirming what she already knew. “He turned you down, didn’t he?” A warm shiver ran through her. “I know it’s difficult for you to swallow, Michael, but not everyone in the Void is as hung up on money as you are.”

Michael strapped plastimetal bracelets to Kraft and Jace then set them loose in his techno-house. Combination locator, locker and luller, the bracelets tracked their movements, denied access to most of the rooms, and also would inject them with powerful drugs if they tried to fight their way out.

Even so, six fully armed guards, changed every hour, stood vigilant by every door. Male, female, tall or squat, every guard had the same focus. If Kraft came near the door, they tensed. The closer she got, the more they gripped up on their weapons. If Jace came near, they tracked him with gleaming eyes as if they were begging him to try something so they could blow him away.

Jace wisely didn’t try anything. At the moment, he sat in a dining room that was bigger than his ship, but only three people sat at the lavishly appointed table.

Kraft picked at her dinner like a finicky child. Michael had given her back her clothes, but he kept looking at her like he wanted to order her to take them right back off. Behind her, ever vigilant, stood five men as big as Heller. One false move and the guards would grab her arm, her leg, or her twined hair.

Michael wasn’t at all concerned with keeping such tabs on him. As Jace sat at the table, picking at his dinner, the only person who stood behind him was a painfully young serving girl named Clara. Michael’s dismissal of Jace as any kind of threat made him feel far more emasculated than Kraft’s big score on the transport job.

“You planning on keeping us here forever?” Kraft asked.

“I haven’t decided yet.” Michael sipped from his crystal wine glass. He sat at the head of the enormous table with Kraft to his right and Jace to his left.

All through the painfully awkward dinner, they made wary eyes at each other. Jace wanted to pull her close and reassure her, and he discovered a similar desire in her gaze.

“What exactly do you want, Mr. Parker?” Jace didn’t have any appetite at all. His stomach rolled and clenched so tightly he didn’t dare eat.

“You will address me as Commander Parker, Captain Lawless.” Michael nodded to Jace. “What I want is very clear. I want Kraft.”

“It’s not mutual.” Kraft pushed back from the table and all five men behind her tensed.

“It isn’t your decision, is it?” Michael turned the full intensity of his gaze on Jace. “Captain Lawless owns you.”

Jace crossed his arms. “I already told you she’s not for sale.”

“Indeed. You won’t sell her because you are a man of honor. I find honorable men most interesting.” Michael took another sip from his wine. “What about you, Kraft?”

“What about me?” She leaned back in her chair.

“What’s your price for Captain Lawless?” Michael twirled his wine glass. “What will you sacrifice to save him?”

Kraft caught Jace’s gaze. “Let him and his crew go, and I’ll—”

“No!” Jace shot to his feet. “No way am I letting you sacrifice yourself to save me and my crew!” As if she hadn’t done enough for him already. He wouldn’t allow her to sell herself to protect him, especially not to a man with about as much honor as Trickster.

Michael considered them both with a satisfied smile. “It seems you two have something to discuss.” He dabbed his napkin to his lips. “You can either sell Kraft to me, or she can stay here to save you and your crew. That’s the deal. I’ll give you twenty-four hours to decide.”

Chapter Nineteen

“Why is he doing this?” Jace threw a pillow and blanket on the floor.

“I don’t know.” Kraft sat on the edge of a massive green silk-clad bed. Her head felt heavy with all the questions in her mind. “I told you I would sleep on the floor, Captain.”

Jace shook his head. “No. You sleep up there.”

“You could sleep up here with me. It’s a huge bed.” The beautiful bed was big enough for six people to sleep comfortably, or eight people to sleep sensuously.

“Everything in this mausoleum is huge.” Jace rubbed his hand over his exhausted face. His stubble rasped against his palm.

“Including Michael’s ego.”

Jace laughed and punched the pillow. “I think that’s what he wants.” He glared at the bed. “Michael wants to see if I’ll try to claim you like some kind of macho Neanderthal. He wants to see if you’ll let me, or kill me.” Jace shook his head, threw himself down on the floor, then glared at the ceiling. He lowered his voice. “I’m curious about it myself.”

Kraft sat very still. Too afraid to meet his eyes, she cast her gaze around the bedroom. Silk, velvet, rich wool, luxurious flowering plants hanging from the ceiling and growing up from large pots on the floor—everything earthy and sensual. Michael, that prick, knew just what buttons to push. If he tested Jace, he just as surely tested her. She didn’t think it was any accident that all the shades of green complemented Jace’s eyes.

“I know he has cameras in here.” Not that she cared in the least. This might be her last night with Jace, and if it was, she wanted him in the lush bed with her. She wanted to touch and taste every last bit of him. She wanted to straddle his hips around every corner of the bed before she had to say goodbye.

“I’m sure he does.” Jace cupped his hands behind his head as his gaze wandered speculatively around the walls and ceiling of the room. “Cameras and coms.”

But, if somehow they got out of here
after
she indulged the last bit of her erotic mind on the so-much-more-than-pretty Captain Jace Lawless, Kraft knew she’d never be able to
tell
him goodbye. One kiss and she’d be hooked for the rest of her life. She knew that down to her toes. Honor bound her to Jace, but love would enslave her to him.

“Coms and cameras and security right beyond the door.” Kraft nodded to the gigantic door about fifty feet away.

“At least he didn’t send those five guys in here to guard you all night.” Jace considered. “Let me guess? I make a move on you and the testosterone freaks rush in here and do the unspeakable to a delightful combination of my own face and my own ass?”

She bit back a laugh. “Not on my watch, Captain.”

“There’s no way in or out of this room but for that door?” He nodded to the gigantic door.

“Only that door.”

“Those five guys are just waiting for you beyond that door, right?”

“Most likely.”

“We can’t get out of here any other way?” Jace perused the ceiling.

“No.”

“If you were alone, could you get out of here?”

“No.” Kraft considered as she looked around the decadently lewd room. Michael had the tightest security in the whole of the Void and he’d more than trebled security to contain her. She had a few tricks up her sleeve, but she was reluctant to share them with Jace when there might be an open com.

“I’m not holding you back, am I?”

The way he asked it, barely a whisper, stunned her for a moment. “Holding me back how?”

“You tell me.” Jace kept his attention on the ceiling.

“You think this would be easy for me if only you weren’t here?”

“Would it be if not for me?” Jace sat up. He drew close, trying to whisper to her without a com picking up their conversation. “Michael is terrified of you. Even with the security bracelet on your wrist, he has five hulking guards follow your every step. Every single person in this house is tense, waiting for you to do something, Michael most of all.”

Kraft nodded. “I know.”

“Michael doesn’t stand a chance against you, and he knows it. Care to explain that to me?”

Kraft shook her head. She didn’t want to discuss her past history with Michael.

“You could kill him, couldn’t you? You know it, he knows it, his guard knows it, and now I do too.”

Kraft looked away. “Are you demanding that I fight him?”

“What?”

“I could take him down, given half a chance. Is that what you want me to do?”

“You’d have to seduce him to get half a chance, wouldn’t you?”

Kraft swallowed hard. “Yes.”

“Could you?”

“I don’t know. Do you want me to try?”

“You’d really do it if I told you to, wouldn’t you?”

“You’re my captain.”

“No, I don’t want you to—I’m not going to use you—he really is Overlord, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“He’s the only man to defeat an IWOG civilization attempt.”

“Yes.”

Jace clearly admired Michael for not only standing up to the IWOG, but defeating them. Given Jace’s past with the IWOG, his attitude didn’t surprise her in the least.

“Do you love him?”

“No.” Straight from her heart, she told Jace the truth. She’d never loved Michael. She’d been soundly in lust with him once, but that was very different from love. Only two things did she cling to—her honor and her love. Not a force in the Void could wrest them from her without her permission. She gave honor to Jace in full and equal measure as she received it, but she had never given her heart to any man.

“If he were in here with you, would you want him sharing that big bed with you?”

“No.”

“But you want me there.”

“Yes.” Kraft finally met his eyes. Now wasn’t the best time to get into this, but now might be the only time they had left. “Tell you what, Captain Lawless, if I had my pick of any man in the whole of the Void to spend my last night with, I’d pick you.”

Reclining on the floor with his hands behind his head, he pinned her with his exotic-sunset green eyes. “I’d pick you. But not when I feel like I have to. I don’t want you to feel like you have to.” He let out a longsuffering sigh. “I don’t like feeling I have to claim you in some twisted way to prove I’m a man because of some pissing contest with Michael.” Jace tore his gaze away to focus on the ceiling of the plush bedroom they shared. “I don’t want it to be like that with you.”

The longing in his voice touched her deeply. “I’ll stay. You take the money and go. Trust me, Captain, I’ll escape.”

“You want me to sell you for 15Mil.” Jace said it dispassionately, looking at the shadow thick ceiling. “What a tidy profit on fifteen hundred.”

“I’ll stay here just so you can get away. Take the damn money. It’s bonus all around.”

“No.”

She was simultaneously pleased and angered when he didn’t hesitate. “Captain—”

“What was the deal with you and Michael?”

Reluctant to answer, she stalled for time by slipping her boots off. “We were lovers for three months, but that was five years ago.”

“It ended badly?”

Very badly, she thought. “Michael went his own way.” A way she refused to tolerate.

“Why does he have your ship?”

“Randoms must have sold it.” No matter how much she loved her ship, after what happened on it, she didn’t want to ever set foot on it again. The emotional residue would drive her crazy.

“He’s behaving either like a man in love, or a man hellbent for revenge, or both. Explain that to me.”

“I can’t.” She removed her socks. “I’ve been racking my brain ever since we got here. When I pulled the IWOG transport job the first time, I sold the goods to Michael—about a year ago. It seemed to me we were friends.” Michael’s sudden shift in attitude baffled her, and her attempts to read him and the objects in his base hadn’t clarified why.

“Did you sleep with him then?”

“Talk about not pulling any punches.”

“Report.” Jace used his imperious captain voice. “Did you or did you not sleep with him the last time you were here?”

“No.”

“Did he want you to?”

“If he did, he didn’t mention it. I flew in, made the deal, had dinner with Michael, and I left.” Kraft shrugged. “That’s why I thought we would be fine coming here. I really don’t know what’s going on.” She tried to rub the exhaustion out of her eyes with her fingertips. “Whatever the reason, it’s clear he wants me to stay, so maybe it’s best—”

“For the last time—no.” Jace climbed off the floor and sat on the bed beside her. “I’m not selling you to him.”

“Don’t think of it that way. Think of it as saving your ship and your crew.”

He frowned. “
You
are part of my crew.”

His intensity caused her to glance away. “If I had any idea, I never would have brought you here.”

“I know.” Tentatively, he took her hand. “We’ll work it out,
annyae
.” His beautiful green eyes searched her face. “I won’t leave you here.”

Kraft knew, at that moment, simply holding his hand while they sat on the plush bed, she fell hopelessly in love with Jace Lawless.