Stark Pleasure; the Space Magnate's Mistress (The LodeStar Series) (37 page)

She was just a woman, easily replaceable. He’d been more than kind to her and had nothing to regret. Anyway, he was not a man to keep a woman around too long, and certainly not the kind to believe in the heart-rending emotion wept over in love songs and romantic holovids.
 

No, he’d wanted to possess her, that was all. Just another acquisition, another sign that he was a wealthy, successful man. Light years from the frightened boy who’d run those streets, his wits and fists the only balance between survival and a descent into degradation and death.
 

He owned the bed in which he lay, the ship that surrounded him, and land and businesses on three planets. He was content.

It was only then that he realized he’d just echoed her dream words.
 

***

He had the limber Raava the next two nights and then lost interest. None of the other lovely women on the ship roused his desire, either. He slept restlessly. When he realized he was turning too often to the moon brandy, he ordered a sleep gesic from Dr. Tentaclar, the ship physician.

He spent the fourth evening out on holovid with his brothers, each in turn.
 

Creed was hard at work on his mining claim, supervising the crew of laborers and mining droids working the titanium.

“Logan,” he said, nodding. He sat alone on a verandah hewn of rock and wood, a wild mountain range in the distance. “How’s the voyage?”

“Fine.” Creed was alone too much. Stark could still see the solemn, wide-eyed little boy he’d been, hanging close by his older brothers’ sides, always hungry as his thin body fought to grow into the tall, lean man he’d become.

“Is your new, ah, lady with you?” Creed asked.
 

“No,” Stark said shortly. “That didn’t work out.”

Creed frowned. “What happened to her?”

“She left. Saved me the expense of a parting gift, so I’m counting my blessings. What about you? Been to the settlements lately?”

 
Creed didn’t answer for a moment, watching his older brother. But finally he shrugged, letting Stark change the subject. “You know I don’t frequent the settlements much. I’m busy here.”

“You’re alone too much,” Stark said. “How are you ever going to meet a woman to share that huge house you’ve built, if you don’t go anywhere?”

Creed gave him a look. “I’ll order one in with the next shipment of supplies,” he said dryly.

Stark grinned as he was meant to, but the idea had a grain of truth to it. Perhaps that’s what it would take, was presenting his youngest brother with a woman. One so enticing he couldn’t resist her.

They talked about the new mining droids that were scheduled to arrive soon, and Stark signed off.

Joran he found lounging in his tent, playing holodice with two of his band of nomads. A sloe-eyed temptress hung on his shoulder.

“No woman with you,” he said to Stark, cocking his head with interest. “She turn out to be more interested in your credit than you?”

“No, in another man,” Stark said. “Did you get the new tech I sent you?”

“I did, thanks. It’ll come in very handy when we’re hunting … wild game.”

Stark nodded. Joran couldn’t speak of the intended use of the tech in front of the woman, or perhaps the men. He let very few into his confidence.

 
When he was alone again, Stark kept his thoughts focused on his brothers. They were both nearing thirty years of age. The time in a man’s life when he should be settling down, starting a family. He meant to see to that for both of them.
 

Creed first, as he was completely alone. Might take a bit of manipulation behind his back. Getting past his formidable personal barriers was the problem. His youngest brother might be a deadly fighting machine with the eerie calm of the monk he’d trained to be for a time, but he was lonely. And Stark would fix that, one way or the other.

Joran, on the other hand, spread his favors freely among the women of his band and those he met in gambling tents and brothels. The trick would be convincing him to choose a woman of quality, with whom he would want to raise a family.

The fifth evening, Stark spent playing holodice with Navos and Craig and drinking the ale Craig favored. Stark was in no hurry for his bed. The gesics turned out to be a questionable aid—he slept, but now he was unable to wake from the bad dream that continued to plague him.
 

The sixth evening he wandered the paths of
Orion
’s arboretum. Somewhere a waterfall splashed softly into a pond. Overhead, birds warbled and tweeted in the luxuriant tropical trees and vines, and outside the huge windows lay the panoply of space.
 

The three moons of Frontiera shone white in the distance, and the planet herself lay like a blue and green ball, with a crescent of darkness on one side, and the golden glaze of daylight on the other. The planet was a place of new beginnings for many of the beings on this very ship. They’d fled the stress and clamor of their overcrowded homes to begin new lives. Staking claims for themselves and their families.

He stared at the approaching world for a time and then continued restlessly along the path through the shrubbery. A large gemcock strutted onto the path ahead of him, iridescent purple tail feathers trailing. Stretching its neck, the bird cocked its gold-crowned head and goggled at Stark. Deciding he was harmless, it preceded him like a feathered herald.

He smiled humorlessly to himself. Yes, he was the ruler of all he surveyed, and captain of his fate, whatever the seven hells that might be. But he couldn’t seem to get one small, calculating cat out of his mind and his dreams. He was as alone as the gemcock, his fine feathers availing him no mate, either.

Anger firing the impulse, he cued his comlink.
 

“Raava. Care to join me in my stateroom for a drink?”

He could use the comfort of a warm, soft body.

Chapter 33

Cold. So cold, shivering so violently her teeth chattered together and her body vibrated against the hard surface underneath her. Kiri reached for a blanket, but found only a thin insulating wrap that rustled in her grasp.

Moaning at the pain lancing through her head, she forced her eyes open. A small rectangular shape sat directly in her line of sight, on the edge of a drab metal platform. She knew that shape. Memories chased through her foggy mind. She winced, clutching her head as the pain grew worse. She’d think later.

She drifted back into an uneasy sleep. This time she dreamed.

She lay in the cubby, huddled under her comforter. Outside lights flashed, and screams echoed, followed by a heavy thump against her door. She stared at the floor, waiting for the crimson pool she knew would spread under the door, as it always did.

But instead, the door flew open, and a shadow fell across her bed. She clenched her chattering teeth. This time they’d kill her, too. But it was Tal gazing down at her, a threatening scowl on his handsome face.

“Get up,” he said in a strange, grating voice. “You’re not riding for free.”

The metal cot jolted with the force of a heavy kick. “Get up,” repeated the voice in Galactic, the universal language. “Or I’ll drag you out myself, and you won’t like it.”

Kiri jerked awake. She squinted painfully at the squat figure standing over her. He or she resembled nothing so much as an evil space pirate in an adventure holovid.
 

Mauritian; a humanoid with a strange purple-blue cast to skin and hair. As Kiri gaped, the being smiled, not a pleasant sight. Yellow eyes flared, crooked teeth gleaming among straggling braids.
 

“Guess I get to help you up.”

Kiri jolted upright, the pain in her head nearly sending her flat again. She bent over, clutching her head. “I’m up. But,
where
am I? Who are you?”

“Why, you’re on a top-line cruise ship, your majesty,” cooed the Mauritian in a falsetto. “Allow me to escort you to your throne.”

Nausea hit, and Kiri retched. She clapped a hand over her mouth, in the imminent knowledge that she was going to be very sick.

“Gah—in here,” the Mauritian commanded, recoiling to slap open a narrow hatch.

Kiri bolted into a tiny lav and vomited until her gut was empty and she was shaking with revulsion at the bitter taste. She staggered to the basin and drank water from her cupped hands, then splashed some on her face. Now her throat hurt to match her head.

She stared at her pale reflection into the tiny, fogged mirror. Tiny, battered and stinking, the lav said clearly this was not a good place. And the last thing she remembered was getting into Tal’s slider and hearing his soft, deep voice.
 

He’d sold her out. Maybe literally.

“If you’re emptied out, you got work to do,” the Mauritian barked.

Kiri staggered back out of the lav, one hand on the wall for balance. The room was a sleep cubby, she saw now, with drab, scarred walls and no ornamentation of any kind. The narrow, hard cot held only the thin blanket and a familiar cerametal box.

Tal had sent her strong box with her. Was this his idea of a cruel joke? Give her what she’d asked for and take away everything else?

“Where am I?” Was she in some back-alley den near the dock?

“Come on.” The Mauritian shoved open the narrow hatch, and led the way along a narrow passageway lined with similar hatches, some open. Kiri glimpsed other sleep cubbies, full of the clutter of occupancy. There were others here. Was that a good sign, or a bad one?

They passed into an open area, full of noise and bustle the smell of food, and her hope fled.
 

Past the dozen tables full of raucous beings of every race, and the smells of food and drink and clatter of food service on a large scale, the room was lined with portholes.
 

Beyond them all gleamed the star-filled, midnight reaches of deep space.
 

Kiri’s knees buckled, and she fell against the nearest bulkhead, only a railing holding her up. Her head buzzed with shock.
 

She was in deep space
. And not on one of Stark’s beautiful ships with his ex-Space Forces pilot and crew. But on a bucket of rust probably cobbled together with no more finesse than the old airbuses she rode on Earth II.

She was going to die. Probably from horrible suffocation when an airlock broke, or something like that.

“Ho, Gravia, what you bring us?” called a deep voice. “Something shiny?”

“Nothing for you, space scum,” Kiri’s captor called back. “Anyway, I’m the beauty, not her.”

Laughter rolled, but it echoed from far away as Kiri stared at the nearest porthole. Space ...
she was
in space
, shanghaied and bound for who knew what horrible fate.
 

“Come on, immi,” the Mauritian said. She grabbed Kiri’s arm in bruising grip and hustled her across the big room, through a gauntlet of predatory gazes. Kiri sank into herself, assuming the mantle of her youth, returning the looks with her own blank stare. Never let anyone see the fear.
 

She was intensely relieved to reach the din of the galley at the other side.

The Mau shoved Kiri onto a stool and stabbed one clawed hand at a large, shiny machine standing on the counter. “Now, you show me how to work this.”

Kiri blinked, unable to believe her eyes. She turned to the Mauritian, ignoring the two Pangaeans and human who paused in their chores to watch curiously.

“You ... you brought me here to
run a
coffee machine
?”

The human, a stout, freckled man, snickered, and the two Pangaeans’ hair wriggled around their throats, their eyes dancing. The Mauritian bared her teeth at Kiri, her yellow eyes full of menace.

“No, I brought you here to show
me
how to run it,” she snarled. “Then I don’t need you no more, and you’ll earn your keep another way. We need another ship’s whore, the others are gettin’ worn out, the boys use them so hard.”

“‘ere now,” Freckles protested, shifting uneasily. “No call to be so—”

“Shut your maw,” the Mauritian snarled at him, and he subsided, although with a disapproving air.
 

Her past wrapped its slimy tentacles around Kiri. Death seemed less imminent, but now rape and injury yawned like a slavering mouth.

She stared out at the dining hall full of men and women, many of whom were still watching her through the open service counter, laughing as they talked among themselves. One huge tattooed man grinned and then wiggled his long tongue suggestively. Kiri rolled her eyes, revulsion tightening her face. He and his cronies roared with laughter.

She’d been slammed back into her past as if she’d never left the government-funded school, among the roughest street youths, all jockeying for position and status.
 

Well, hells. She knew how to do this. She’d just never thought she’d have to again.

The Mauritian moved closer to Kiri, her claws digging into Kiri’s shoulder through her leather vest. “Get busy,” she said. “Or you’re theirs.”