Overlord: The Fringe, Book 2 (42 page)

Jace lowered his voice as his mouth descended on hers. “Seems like a waste of time for you to put on all those complicated clothes when I’m just going to make you take them off.”

Her eyes widened.

Placing his mouth to her ear, he whispered, “Or did you want to dress up and then strip for me?”

She tensed and swallowed with an audible click.

He pressed closer. “I’ve never had a whore in my bed. If you’re familiar with the concept, maybe you could walk me through it.”

Kraft pulled back and narrowed her gaze. “After ten years of celibacy, I think a walk is all it would take.”

“Is that so?” Refusing to back down, Jace traced his finger along her ear to her neck. “Since it’s been a decade for me, I’m thinking you won’t be able to walk by the time I’m satisfied.”

Her jaw damn near hit the floor.

Jace took a perverse delight in shocking her, and her dismay made him even more determined to make her back down this time. Even if he had to say the most vulgar things in the Void, he would force her retreat.

“I can’t believe you’re surprised.” He stroked her lips with a forceful fingertip. “You can read me so well, right?”

She darted her gaze to the floor. “I told you, I can’t read you like that. I can read—”

Plush lips gave way below the thrust of his silencing finger. When her hungry eyes met his, he said, “Don’t try to distract me. I don’t care what you can read. You don’t have to read me. I’ll tell you what I want.”

Lowering his mouth to her neck, he nipped lightly. “I want you.” After pulling her mocha skin, marking her, he lifted his mouth to her ear. “I want you writhing and panting and sweating below my thrusting body.”

She placed her large hands on his chest, pushed him back and looked him right in the eye. The depths of her black gaze swarmed with heat, smoky and slightly unfocused. “You want me by force?”

He heard the catch in her voice and sensed her desperation. He smiled at her as he answered her question with one of his own. “How can I force you when sex is part of your contract, my lovely cook-whore?”

Kraft withdrew with a startled step back. She pressed against the metal door of his bunk and flattened her palms against the smooth durosteel to steady herself.

Closing in on her, he took a half-step forward and placed his palms on the door, encasing her with his arms. In a tingling rush, a fleeting ripple washed over his body, and he wondered if he could actually feel Kraft trying to read him through the door. He forced himself to contain the rush by focusing his mind and constricting his body to a tense stance.

Kraft stood taller. Confusion and fear darted across her expressive face. He wondered if the darkness in him caused her reaction, or if he’d succeeded in preventing her from reading him. Either way, he sensed his advantage.

Pressing his mouth to her ear, he whispered, “What’s wrong, sugar-britches? I thought you were all for this kind of dance between us, especially after what you said in the cargo bay.”

With her back to his bunk door, she lifted her face and the whole of her body until she met his gaze with level intensity. Since she couldn’t force him to retreat verbally, she now tried to force his retreat with the fierceness of her gaze, and it almost worked.

He fought down the urge to step back by moving closer. She radiated the scents of cooking, but below, he found that enticing hint of her musky perfume. Her scent was rich, intoxicating and alluring. He wanted to find the source of her fragrance and lose himself in it.

“Just give me the order, Captain Lawless, and I’ll ride you until we both collapse.”

One fleeting vision of her proudly riding astride him caused him to blush and turn away. The triumphant look on her face clarified she thought such a command a distinct impossibility.

She seemed pleased that she’d finally forced him to back down. He watched Kraft’s pulse jump below the smooth skin of her neck when he closed in on her and said, “That’s an order I’m not likely to give.”

Her lips parted in surprise. She lowered her face but not her gaze.

“I wouldn’t order you to ride me because I like to be on top.”

He forced her chin up so their lips came close without touching. “Stop giving me that submissive face when you’ve got nothing behind it but arrogance.”

Kraft stood tall. “I thought you preferred submissive women?”

“As a matter of fact I do.” Tracing his finger along the open V of her shirt, he smoothed the fabric against the curve of her breasts and popped open one of the small wooden buttons. “Do you like submissive men?”

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, but it caught in her throat. When he looked down, he discovered her nipples were pressed tight against the soft yellow fabric of his old shirt.

He chuckled and stroked the barest brush of his fingertip over the swell of her nipple. “Obviously not.”

Is love the biggest con of them all?

The Slipstream Con

© 2011 S. Reesa Herberth and Michelle Moore

A
Ylendrian Empire
Story

For three years, Kellen Frey has led bounty hunters Tal and Vanya on a merry chase, evading capture with flair and style. Now, just when they finally have their pet project—and object of their mutual fantasies—cornered, the elusive con artist turns the tables and gives himself up. A sudden attack of conscience, perhaps? Tal and Vanya know better.

Their suspicions are confirmed when a crime lord comes dangerously close to killing them all, and the rapidly sickening thief is forced to confess the truth—he’s been accidentally dosed with a highly illegal form of nanotechnology.

If Kellen can’t get his hands on another dose, he’s finished. The problem is, the only thief who’s ever broken in to Slipstream Labs is his ex-girlfriend, and she’s allergic to bounty hunters. As he does his best to play both sides, he struggles with his growing desire to be more than a prisoner to Tal and Vanya. Without trust, they won’t survive long. The clock is ticking as they race to uncover a conspiracy that spans the Ylendrian Empire.

Warning: This book contains an anti-hero with no qualms about redecorating your spaceship, a heroine capable of killing you with her hair stick, and another hero who would like nothing more than to shag them both without the inconvenience of a conscience.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
The Slipstream Con:

Kellen Frey woke to the worst headache of his life and the warmth and security that came of knowing that he had been royally screwed by the universe. Both of those things seemed trivial when compared to the unwelcome press of confinement, the thrum of a strange ship around him and the pair of bounty hunters waiting at his bedside.

“If I make a comparison to vultures, which of you is going to hit me first?”

Tal smiled rather grimly. “Since you just blasted the shit out of Van’s notebook, I’m going to guess her.”

“I did
what
?” He started to push himself up, unwilling to have them both looming over him, and hissed in pain, dropping back onto the bunk with a head-jarring thump. The fingers on his left hand felt like he’d jammed them against an engine core, blistered and painful. He stared blankly for a long second, then looked up accusingly. “I was joking about hitting me. But honestly, this is worse.”

“Oh, that was all you, Frey.” Vanya gestured towards a dead pile of plastic on the floor. “Your hand and my computer. You want to tell us what the hell’s going on?”

“I seem to remember saying that I don’t know.” He tossed a hand over his eyes to block out some of the light. “I didn’t have any revelations while I was unconscious.”

Tal took a step closer, leaning over until his face was inches away from Frey’s. “Don’t be a smart-ass.” Tal enunciated each word with what seemed to be barely contained anger, and Kellen did his best not flinch. “You touched Vanya’s computer and it fucking melted. You can tell us what the hell you’ve gotten yourself into or I’m going to be really tempted to space you, bounty or no bounty.”

The one reply he had to that wasn’t going to make Tal any happier, and it didn’t seem wise to antagonize the man any further at the moment. Kellen settled for using his right arm to lever himself into a sitting position, left hand cradled against his chest, stubbornly silent.

Suddenly there were two of them hanging over him, forcing Kellen to squint against the haloing effect of the overhead lights. Vanya rested fingertips on Tal’s shoulder before gently pulling him back. “Get me a med kit, love. I should look at his hand and do a quick scan. I’m not sure he didn’t have a seizure.”

Tal scowled, reluctance in every line of his body as he stepped away from the bed. “Okay, but he’s still going to answer some questions.”

“Good cop, bad cop.” Kellen laughed, the sound catching painfully in the back of his throat. “And you accused me of being clichéd.”

“Nobody ever believes me as the good cop,” Tal said over his shoulder. “It started to hurt my feelings, so Vanya said we could switch.” He popped the kit open and set it on the ground, ostensibly out of Kellen’s reach. After handing her the scanner, he shoved his hands into his pockets, standing behind her like a sentry. “You’re not getting out of this.”

Kellen watched Vanya unfold his hand, swallowing over nausea as he caught sight of his blistered fingertips. It hurt like hell, but worse than the pain was the sick feeling of fear over having his hand damaged and all that that implied. No work, and worse, no art. It was more than he could deal with at the moment, so he turned his attention to Tal instead. “If you’d like, I could give you some tips on maintaining a pleasant demeanor. We could do some role-playing. Help you develop a more winsome attitude.”

“You do seem to have perfected those talents, what with that trail of besotted victims across at least ten known systems.” Tal rolled his eyes. “It never ceases to amaze me how few of them can seem to manage to hate you. Do you know how annoying it is to interview an infuriated art dealer? There’s screaming, and arm waving, and yet they still seem to work into the conversation how wonderfully
charming
you are.”

Vanya smothered a giggle, then struggled to straighten her face when her husband gave her a betrayed look. “It’s true.”

“Thank you, Vanya,” Kellen said with equanimity. “If only your husband would learn from your deportment, he wouldn’t need lessons from me.” He bit down on his lip for a second as she worked a burn cream over his fingertips.

“I’ll take your assessment of my manners under advisement,” Tal replied. “In the meantime, I’ve had a lot of success with intimidation and my winning smile.” A flash of the aforementioned smile distracted Kellen, and he quirked his mouth in response. “Now, why did you just hand yourself over to us?”

“Your pretty, pretty eyes.” He yanked his bandaged hand back to his chest and sighed as Vanya began waving a scanner at him with a frown. Tal looked even less pleased.

“Really? Because I think it had more to do with you wanting off that station pretty damn bad and using us to that end. And I think I speak for us both when I say we don’t appreciate being used.”

Kellen started to shrug, and then thought better of it when even that movement made his head throb. “You wanted your bounty. I wanted off Station 43. It seemed like a win-win situation. I’m not sure why you’re complaining.”

“We’re not complaining. We’re suspicious. There’s a difference.” Vanya put a finger under his chin, tipping his head to the side. “We don’t like surprises.”

“Birthdays must be so much fun for you both.”

The Kellen Frey philosophy of life forbade gambling on the unknown, not when success rested on evaluation of all the risks, and then a carefully weighed decision about the chances of achieving the identified goal. The fact that he’d spent almost as long studying Tal and Vanya as they’d spent studying him had made this decision as safe a bet as it could be, but even that knowledge wasn’t doing much to dispel the crushing anxiety at being a prisoner.

“Look, I’m…I’m sick, okay? I’m off my game, and Cassie asked me to deliver something, so I figured it’d be a nice, simple drop and dash. Except
you
turned up, and there went my ship, and the people I was delivering to decided they didn’t like the goods, so I needed to get out of there, fast. It’s not like I’m looking forward to prison, but I was looking forward to
death
even less, so here we are.” Mustering up a grin, he flashed it at Tal, as Vanya was busy holding his head still with the palm of her hand. “I figured I’d just escape before you could turn me in, and we’d all be happy. You can keep chasing me, and I can keep doing things that make you grudgingly admire my inimitable skills.” Vanya pushed his head to the side, and he frowned at her. “As I said, it’s win-win.”

“You may be sick, but you’re definitely not suffering any lingering brain trauma,” Vanya reported. “And stop teasing my husband about his little crush on your career.”

“I hardly see how it’s
my
fault that I inspire romance and lust in
your
husband.” He quite enjoyed the way Tal’s face pinked up to the very tips of his ears, mouth open in indignation before Kellen cut him off. “Besides, it’s just the thrill of the chase. Now that I’m actually here, I’m sure the infatuation will fade.”

“I’m not infatuated with you!”

Vanya’s tight grip on his chin made Kellen yelp. “Enough. So we’ve established why you’re here. What we haven’t got an answer to is how you managed to melt my notebook.” Her hand went from his face to his clenched fingers, prying them open. “And something else odd. The scanner says that these burns are from the inside. How in all that’s holy did you manage that?”

“Are you sure?” He stared at his hand as if he could see through the bandages. What exactly had Cassie given him? “Maybe I’m just that hot.”

Overlord

The Fringe: Book Two

Anitra Lynn McLeod

His planet is his prison…and only she can set him free.

The Fringe, Book 2

After a year, Michael “Overlord” Parker finally knows who’s been pilfering his black market goods. Astonishingly, the elusive Bandit of Taiga isn’t a man. It’s a woman, an infuriating spitfire who’s half in love with Michael’s overly romanticized reputation.