Stark Surrender (25 page)

Logan turned to his family. “This Mordacity is after me, and everyone associated with me. Somehow he figured out who I really am. This is my fight. The best thing you could all do is take the next flight home to Frontiera.”

Both Joran and Creed gave him identical looks that said he’d lost his mind.

“You’re not fit to fight,” Joran said. “Quark’s sake, brother, you just climbed out of a regen tube.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Creed added. “The women will be safe here. I’m the best at gathering intel—I’m on that.”

“And I have contacts in all the law enforcement arms,” Bronc said.

Logan sighed. “The three of you are warriors, I won’t argue that. I’ll listen to you when it comes to how, when and where we do this. But I’m in, all the way.”

Joran sighed. “Now that’s the big brother we know.” Creed nodded, and Bronc waited for orders.

“Bronc, you have someone on a link with the fire and police?” Logan asked. “Good. Find out the status of the scraper, what we need to do there. Creed, if you have any Zhen Lau in the area, appreciate if you’d contact them. Joran—”

“Already on it,” his brother cut in. “IBI, IGSF and local cops.”

Logan nodded. “We’ll conference again in … thirty minutes?”

Receiving agreement, he nodded. Then he cast one last look at Kiri, standing there in the center of the sitting room, framed by the holovid of a burning building. He would keep her safe, and then he would send her home on his finest cruise ship.

Ignoring the rending sensation in his heart, he turned and walked away from her.

“Logan,” she called, stopping him in his tracks. “Don’t forget that I can help. I was born and raised in this city too. I know the streets, and the people.”

He turned just enough to look at her over his shoulder. He bowed. “So you do,” he acknowledged. “I won’t forget.”

She motioned slightly with her head. Following her hint, he looked to Kai, Zaë and Taara, all watching him as well, all with the same intensity and eagerness. They wanted to help too. They might not be career warriors, but each of these women, and Kai, had proven their mettle in their own adventures.

“Very well. We’re a team,” he said. “And everyone is important. I—we may not know how or when as of yet—but know that you’ll be called on to help if needed.”

The looks of pride and satisfaction on their faces hit him deep, and spread a warmth through his belly. Family, he thought. Full of surprises.

It did not occur to him until he’d already walked away that he’d included the woman he’d just renounced for her own good, and her brother who disliked him intensely, in his family. When he did realize it, he shook his head at his own foolishness.

But then, as he walked into his office, a new thought smacked him in the chest—not painfully, but with a force that stopped him in his tracks. By pushing Kiri away last night, had he tried to take her choices away again—only in a different way than the first time he’d done so? She was a grown woman. Surely she deserved the right to choose.

He turned to the still open door, to go and find her, and tell her that should she happen to decide to choose him, in any way, he would work his fingers to the bone to be worthy of her.

As if summoned, his lovely Tyger stalked through his open office door, her face fierce.

“Logan,” she said, “We are going to talk later. You said your piece last night, and I listened. But I have a few things to say to you too. So you’ll listen.”

“Yes,” he said. “I will.”

Because he was teetering here, on a blade edge of despair and hope, and he had the growing feeling that only with a guide would he find the balance to survive. And who better than a feisty Tyger-kitten who’d proved she could walk the precipice with aplomb and come out smiling?

Bending, he pressed a kiss to her forehead, and then held the door for her. “I’ll see you later.” A promise.

She searched his eyes, then nodded, a challenge. “All right. Later.”

He watched her go, admiring her grace, her spirit and the enticing curve of her ass. He was smiling slightly as he turned his attention to sussing out what was going on in the city of his birth.

He and his brothers reconvened as promised, along with Kai, who slipped into Logan’s office behind Bronc, although he just listened while they talked, but they had acquired very little news from the streets.

The police reports focused on the usual crime rates—a percentage of domestic, robbery, murders, and union unrest on the water docks. Gang-related activity was down for the night.

“Which makes me uneasy in a different way,” Creed said. “Like maybe they’re staying quiet, resting up for something big.”

“Well, we can’t do anything without intel,” Joran said. “Let’s all get a good night’s rest if we can.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

After they broke, Logan made his way back to his own room. As he pushed open the heavy door, of real wood carved in a graceful design he’d chosen himself, he stopped short.

Kiri sat curled in the chair beside his bed. Wearing a long robe of pale gold wool fastened to her throat, with fluffy little slippers on her feet, she was perusing a holoreader with wide-eyed seriousness.

He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him, a smile growing on his face.

“I didn’t expect to find you here,” he said quietly.

She looked up and blinked, as if coming out of a trance. Then she hastily closed the reader, and tucked it behind her, looking almost guilty.

“Um, well, I thought you could get into bed, and we could talk,” she said. “Before you go to sleep.”

He walked toward her, unfastening his shirt. “A sound plan,” he agreed gravely.

She blushed, and shook her head. “I meant … I’ll sit here, until you’re sleepy. Then I’ll leave.”

She immediately yawned, and covered her mouth with one hand, her eyes drooping closed. “Oh, sorry. I’m just …”

“You’re as tired as I am,” he said, pulling off his shirt. “Taara was right. You’ve been weary of late. Are you well?” Please God don’t let her still be suffering any trauma from his treatment of her, or the sedative he’d given her when he took her.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Really, I’m fine. I’d tell you if I weren’t, so don’t look like that, Logan.”

She touched his hand as he paused by her chair. He turned his palm up and gathered hers into it, then bent slowly and pressed a kiss to her fingertips. “All right,” he said. “I’ll just be a moment.”

When he came out of his lav, she was yawning again, but she widened her eyes hastily.

Clad in sleep pants and a tee, Logan moved to his bed. Natan had already been in to pull the covers back. Logan sat on the edge of the bed, and looked at Kiri. “Have you had your nutrition smoothie?” he asked, smiling to himself as he remembered Natan’s solicitous care for her.

She blushed again, which he found charming, but extremely curious.

“Yes,” she said. “Natan is very kind to me—to us.”

“Kiri, what is it? There’s something …” His intuition was pinging as loudly as an incoming link on his com. “Tell me, please.”

She gave him a look of what looked like mingled terror and awe. Then she lowered her feet to the floor, rose and glided toward him. “Give me your hand, Logan.”

Watching her curiously, he did so.

She took his hand in her smaller one and pulled it to her, carefully pressing his big hand flat against her belly. Then she looked into his eyes.

“Logan, we—we must figure out how to get along, you and I. How to go forward from here. Because … we have more than you and me to consider now. Or we will soon.”

* * *

Sitting so still that for a moment she thought he hadn’t heard or understood her words, Logan stared at her. Then his gaze slipped slowly down to where she held both her hands over his. A look of wonder overtook his face—his mouth dropping open, his still-bruised eyes wide.

“More than you and me. You mean … we’ve made … a baby?” His voice was nearly unrecognizable.

She nodded, her heart pounding so hard poor Peabean probably heard thunder. “So, you kind of have to rethink your big plan to renounce all contact with me. Because even if we’re not together, you know, like a couple … I want you to be her father.”

He heaved a huge, shaken breath. Then he slipped his other arm around her and pulled her forward, pressing his face against her belly. His arms slid around her, and he held her close, his breath hot through her thin robe and nighty, his hand caressing her belly with exquisite care.

“Oh, my God,” he muttered. “A child. I don’t understand. When did this happen?”

“The night you spent with me on Frontiera,” she said. “I was … a little behind on my vaccinations. And evidently ovulating just then.”

He nodded. “I see. So … what the hells do we do now?”

Kiri looked down at the top of his head, his hair already glossy on his scalp, growing in a neat swirl around his crown. Lifting her hands, she cupped his head, and smoothed her palms tenderly over it, feeling the shape of his skull, the warmth of him in her hands. “We’ll figure it out, I guess.”

He laughed, but it seemed to end in a choked sob, which broke her heart. He truly believed all those dark things he’d said to her last night, about himself.

“And what did I ever do to deserve you—this?” he mumbled.

She shook her head, bending to press her lips to his head. “I don’t think it’s so much a matter of deserving,” she whispered. “It just is … and then you deal with what you’re given.”

He leaned back, and urged her down onto his thigh. Now on the same level, he looked into her face, his taut with emotion, his gaze turbulent. He held her securely, his hands on her hips, his thumbs caressing her through wool and silk.

“Whatever happens,” he said fiercely, “I will be there for you, Kiri. And for—did you say her? You’re carrying a baby girl?”

“Your doctors say so.”

“Oh, God,” he repeated. “I definitely don’t deserve a …”

“You can say it—a daughter.”

“A daughter.” He examined her face wonderingly. “She’ll look like you.”

“She may look like you,” Kiri said. A girl with her father’s beautiful gray eyes.

He scowled. “She and you both deserve better. A battered hulk of a man who is the walking definition of hubris.”

All right, that was just enough. Kiri drew back her hand and smacked him on the arm.

“Logan Stark,” she said through clenched teeth, “How dare you sit here and feel sorry for yourself when we have Peabean to think of? You have a few scars? So what? I know very well you can afford to have every scar on your body removed if you wish. As for resting, you can rest in the quarking regen tube.”

His hands fisted in her robe, and she was shocked to see a dark flush appear on his chiseled cheekbones, and that his gaze fell away from hers. “I don’t mean physically—although I’m now a cybernetic marvel. I meant the things I’ve done, the way I’ve lived my life. What woman wants a man who’s—”

“Maybe the kind of woman who knows what’s really important.” Her voice rose with every word, but she didn’t care, damn it. “Which is that you’re alive—that she doesn’t have to live in a galaxy without you in it. That every time she looks into your eyes, she’ll give thanks for the tech to repair you enough to lead a normal life. That you’re back, and not that terrified man so locked out of his own past, his own life that he thinks everyone who comes close is an enemy, to be snarled at and guarded against.’

‘I know what kind of man you are, Logan—I’ve always known. So stop trying to frighten me away by telling me you’re some kind of monster. It’s not true. You’re arrogant and stubborn and autocratic as hells, but when you were drugged, you acted out of fear and anger, and it’s okay to admit that.”

He stared at her as if she’d morphed into a hissing catamount. Then his lips quirked up in a crooked smile. “All right, Tyger. I’ll take all of that under consideration.”

“See that you do.”

His smile crooked up farther. “And peabean? What kind of a name is that for our daughter?”

She wrinkled her nose. “That’s how tiny she is, so I—I sort of began calling her that, in my mind.”

“So as she grows and develops, you’ll call her Gremel Fruit? And then Pala Melon?”

“Oh, stop.” She snickered, and he grinned at her, his face creasing in the blindingly attractive way she remembered. “You have eight and a half months to think of something better. I mean, we do. You don’t get to name her by yourself.”

He sobered, that dark distance back in his gaze that she’d seen this morning at breakfast.

“I should go,” she said. “You need sleep, and I’m keeping you awake.”

“Kiri,” he interrupted her, holding her where she was. “I … want you close. But it’s best for you if you keep your distance from me.”

She shoved at him so hard she nearly fell on the floor. Stumbling to her feet, she glared down at him, furious and hurt. “Right. It’s not me, it’s you. Do you have any idea how lame that is, Logan? God, a great lover like you should be able to do better than that when you’re brushing a woman off.”

He grasped her wrist, his brows shooting together in a fearsome scowl, a flush riding his cheekbones. “Brushing you off? God, woman—can’t you see it’s tearing me apart to try and give you space? I failed you, Kiri. I behaved abysmally toward you. You deserve better.”

“Yes, I do, but somehow I love you anyway!” she cried. “You are such an idiot. Why do you think I took you in when you came to me on Frontiera? And why did I respond to you even after you kidnapped me? Not because you’re such a great lover. You’re not the only one who can have others, you know. I could too, if I … if I wanted to.”

Too late, when her impassioned words hung in the hushed room between them, Kiri pressed her fingers to her lips. She stared at Logan in horror, as his gaze gleamed with an all too familiar silver heat.

She moved, but his hand shot out and grasped hers, pulling her with him as he rocked back onto the bed, and she lay half on top of him. He pressed a kiss to the center of her palm and gave her a look that struck joy and fear deep into her heart.

“But I’m over it now,” she said, her stupid voice cracking. “I—I was just saying that was then. Now I … I’m, yeah, I’m over you.” All over him, literally, and she wanted to stay here, to lie on him and soak him in.

He kissed her hand again, and her fingers wanted to curl around the sensation.

“And anyway, now you have Liss,” she added, spitting the name out like a bite of green gremel.

Unexpectedly, Logan’s eye crinkled, as if he were smiling behind her hand. “No, now I have you and, er, Peabean.”

Kiri tried to jerk her hand from his. “Don’t you laugh at me, you—you arrogant bastard.”

He held on, his other arm sliding around her back and holding her there, his hand caressing her back through her thin robe as if her insult hadn’t even registered.

“Kitten,” he said, “God, I cannot believe you’re comparing yourself to a woman like her. Liss and I were allies, companions, not lovers.”

She snorted. “Right. I saw you in the surveillance vid. You’re companionable, all right.”

He grimaced. “You saw what I wanted the city to see. A couple, settled as if they’d been together for months. Not a lone man, new to the city and thus suspect. I never fucked her.”

Kiri blinked at him, registering his last words first. “You ... didn’t?”

He scowled at her. “Kitten, have I ever lied to you?”

She shook her head dumbly. No, she was sure he’d never done that. Which didn’t mean he hadn’t broken her heart.

But even when he’d gone to another woman in anger, thinking Kiri had left him first, he hadn’t tried to lie his way out of it. He’d simply admitted it, and told her he’d been wrong, and that he’d never stop until he gained her forgiveness. But she didn’t want to talk about that now.

“What do you mean, a lone man was suspect? Why did you need her?”

He played with her fingers, his gaze turning inward. “For camouflage, for intel. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I didn’t know who I was. The inside of my skull was one huge throbbing pain—sometimes so bad I couldn’t think. All I knew was that my life had been turned upside down, that I felt someone had done it to me. I wasn’t even sure why I came back here.”

His cheeks flushed again, and he looked up at her even as he set his jaw. “Kitten, the truth is, the shape I was in mentally, I might have had her if I’d been able. But I never felt one iota of interest in her sexually—or any other woman during that time.”

She gaped at him. Logan Stark hadn’t been able to perform sexually? “That must’ve been very … difficult for you,” she mumbled. Ack, she’d almost said hard for him.

“You think? You know I’m used to being in control. Of my businesses, of the world around me. This—this drug, this foul excrement that someone pumped into my brain grabbed all of that and stole it from me, hid it inside my own head.”

She nodded, horrified but fascinated by this look into his ordeal. Logan had never opened up to her this way before, and she could no more turn away than she could stop breathing.

“You were humiliated,” she whispered. “Because they were able to do that to you.”

“In a way. I didn’t know what was wrong, what was missing—by which I mean my memories, not a hard cock. But I felt that something was wrong, and that I was someone’s pawn. It’s been decades since anyone was able to use me. I’ve made damned sure of that.”

She wiggled her fingers, as much to distract him from whatever memory put that torment in his gaze as because his grip had tightened.

He loosened his grasp instantly and stroked her hand. “I came here because ... somehow I knew this place. It’s in my bones, I suppose, since this is where I came from.”

“For both of us,” she said. “We know how to get along here.”

Logan’s gaze warmed. “You and I have things in common that I wish you’d never had to go through.”