Date: 2013-01-02 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Bdsm; Romance; Erotica; Science Fiction
Description: Protectorate Maj. Eve Cartwright has just received the worst assignment of her military career—pose as an Ankharan nitara, a submissive sex slave, in order to seduce and capture rebel leader Michael Taggart. Not only do her superiors expect her to whore herself to achieve her goal, but they seem to be taking a perverse pleasure in the very idea of it. General Mokollik in particular sees this assignment as a way to take Eve down a peg or two. Eve, though, has her own agenda, one that will put her and Taggart in very close contact, but that might not result in exactly what the Protectorate had i
Publisher: Loose Id

THE OFFERING

Christine Warren

www.loose-id.com

The Offering

Copyright © January 2013 by Christine Warren

All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

eISBN 9781623002107

Editor: Maryam Salim

Cover Artist: Ginny Glass

Published in the United States of America

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This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Chapter One

“I didn’t mean to hurt him,” Eve Cartwright repeated for the hundredth time in half as many minutes. She kept her face impassive as she stood before the tribunal of Protectorate judges, but inside she was thinking how in another three questions she’d be wanting to hurt him all over again. Just to vent some of this frustration.

“It doesn’t matter if she meant to or not,” the “he” in question snarled. “The fact remains that Major Cartwright seriously injured another member of the Protectorate Security Force during a routine training exercise. She’s a menace, and she damned well doesn’t belong in an elite unit like the Investigations Bureau.”

Eve glanced over at her accuser and stifled a snort. Captain Jon Hench cradled his formerly broken wrist like a baby bird, even though the regenerators had already knitted the seven fractured bones back together. It would be sore for a while yet, but it wasn’t like the whiner sported any of the more permanent damage Eve had longed to inflict.

“If I may point out, Your Honors,” she said, her tone firm and steady, betraying neither her contempt for Hench nor her dislike for having to explain her actions to the judges. Call her crazy, but she didn’t enjoy being treated as if she were a criminal instead of a detective major in the PSF that had ordered said training exercise. “Captain Hench may be a member of the Security Force, but in this exercise, he was playing the part of a rebel squad leader who had taken a vice-protectorate as hostage. I reacted precisely as the situation would have warranted had this exercise been an actual maneuver. When my opponent began to struggle, I applied due force, and when he threatened me with a weapon—which is prohibited under the rules of the exercise—I increased the force to mete out an appropriate response.”

The judge on the left of the bench sent her a piercing glare. “You believe breaking a fellow officer’s wrist constituted an ‘appropriate’ response?”

Eve gave a curt nod. “Within the context of the exercise, he was not a fellow officer. He was a rebel soldier with a p-force stunner and a hostage.” And he grabbed my tits when I pinned him to the deck of the holochamber. “I stand by my actions and believe I would do nothing differently if given the opportunity.” Except next time I’ll step on his balls too and grind them into porridge.

“You see!” Hench shouted, rising from his seat and looking ridiculous with his arm pinned to his chest. “She has no remorse! She could have killed me, and she’d probably show as little reaction as she does now.”

Not true. If I’d killed you, I’d be doing my happy dance.

High Judge Loret shifted in his center seat and frowned. “Please, Captain, refrain from these outbursts during our proceedings. You had your opportunity to present your accusations, and the defendant must be allowed equal time to offer her explanations.” He nodded to Eve.

She shrugged. “I’ve told you what happened. I acted in accordance with my training and with the circumstances of the exercise. It is regrettable that Captain Hench sustained an injury, but I stand by my actions. If Your Honors believe I should be disciplined, I will abide by your judgment, but I will maintain the belief that I acted in the right.”

“We find your lack of remorse somewhat troubling, Major. Likewise your service record concerns us.” Loret glanced down at his terminal, frown deepening. “There seems to be a pattern of increasing disregard for rules and authority here over the last six months. Would you care to comment on this?”

The question didn’t surprise her, just stiffened her spine. “No, sir.”

“Major Cartwright, we must confess we are baffled by your attitude. You entered the Security Force on the first day of your eligibility and served with an unblemished record for ten years. Every one of your superiors had nothing but praise for you. Until August of last year. From that date your record is full of minor infractions and disciplinary notices. Have you no explanation for any of it?”

“My response to each charge is noted in my record, sir.”

Eyes fixed straight ahead, she stood at attention in the center of the chamber, still in her dirty, sweat-stained camouflage uniform. Her spine stayed rigid as a pole, even though the itch just below her left shoulder blade threatened to drive her crazy. Discipline had carried her through her training and then through the ranks of the Security Force almost as fast as graft or bribery would have, so she wasn’t about to abandon it now. She gazed at the Protectorate seal that decorated the wall behind the judges while they conferred on their decision. She didn’t hold out much hope for a positive outcome.

It would have been easier, she reflected, to just shoot herself in a vital organ with a stunner set on max than to destroy her Security Force career through the long-drawn-out method she’d been using. Political suicide might be just as effective as a stun pulse to the heart, but it took a hell of a lot longer. Six months and counting.

Before August, Eve had been in her glory—deep undercover completing an assignment to flush out a group of rebellion terrorists from an arms market on Hanta Prime. Unfortunately for her career aspirations, her commanding officer had seen fit to order her to lead her men straight into a trap a green cadet could have seen coming from fifty quarks. Naturally she had refused to obey the order. Just as naturally, General Mokollik had threatened her with court-martial, and most naturally of all, she had called him an irresponsible, brain-dead son of a bitch. The next step in the natural order of things had involved the ambush being revealed—followed by a few really tense hours in close contact with the rebels—the general being reprimanded, and Eve’s name going onto the great galactic shit list maintained by the Protectorate’s powers that be.

In the six months since the incident, Eve had been twiddling her thumbs and wasting her time doing none of what she’d been trained for. Instead of working undercover in the camps of the Protectorate’s numerous enemies, gathering vital information and doing some bloody good, she’d been babysitting ambassadors, serving as a glorified courier, and training in exercises she’d completed one-handed before she’d ever left the Security Force’s investigator training program. Right about now she was bored, bitter, and bitchy, so she cut herself some slack for not bowing down and kissing the judges’ feet in abject regret.

The fact that she’d never been good at kissing either feet or asses had a lot to do with her standing here in front of the tribunal, actually. If she just bothered to pucker up once in a while, their response to Hench’s injury would have been less like a trial and more like hearty congratulations. The captain had been emotionally and sexually harassing women on and off the Force as long as anyone could remember, and Eve was hardly the first to attract the sort of attention that had earned him his broken wrist. She didn’t think her average height, average weight, average looks deserved that sort of attention. True, her job kept her body lithe and strong, with slim, graceful muscles, but the man saw firm female forms every day of the week. Hers shouldn’t have attracted undue attention.

Then again, she reflected to herself, from what she could tell, the only thing a woman needed for Hench to want to harass her seemed to be a pulse. Which was a pity, because if he’d confined himself to hitting on women lacking that particular attribute, he might have received a warmer reception than seven newly fractured carpal bones.

Stifling a sigh, she resisted the urge to shift her weight onto one foot while the judges continued to whisper behind the protective sound barrier above the bench. The Powers knew how long it would be before they reached their decision or what the decision would be. Whatever it was, Eve just wanted it reached soon so she could get a shower, a change of clothes, and a hot meal. She wasn’t even particular about whether she got them in her barracks or in the PSF officer’s detention center. A night in the pokey would be worth the satisfaction of hearing those seven little snaps and seeing Hench’s face blanch the color of week-old porridge.

She had started to entertain herself by imagining giving the captain seven matching fractures on his other wrist when the sound barrier dropped and the tribunal turned on her once again.

“Major Cartwright,” Loret said, “it is our duty to weigh every fact at our disposal in order to decide on a proper judgment in your case. Your lack of willingness to speak in defense of your record leaves us to rely on the testimony of your accuser and the notes in your jacket, and we hardly need to tell you that the most recent entries are far from flattering. You were warned where such continued disregard for regulations and authorities would lead.”

Straight to hell. So it’s a good thing I prepaid my ticket, right?

A commotion at the entrance on the other side of the courtroom interrupted the judge’s next comment. Giving in to the urge to see what it was, Eve turned her head just far enough to see the last nail in her coffin stride across the chamber and into the witness circle. Across the space, General Achem Mokollik met her gaze with an impassive one of his own.

Clamping the inner corner of her lip between her teeth, Eve faced forward again and trained her eyes straight ahead. The cavalry had just arrived, but it was the other guy’s cavalry.

“I wish to address the court.” Mokollik’s voice, loud and harsh, made Eve’s skin crawl.

Something nasty rolled off that man in waves, some sort of malevolent energy. Whatever it was, it always made Eve want to stay as far away from him as humanly possible. As it was, she instinctively braced herself against that creeping malice as the judges turned to the general.

“You believe you have something meaningful to contribute to these proceedings before we pass judgment, General?”

Eve saw Mokollik nod out of the corner of her eye. “I do. In fact I have a proposal to make to the court.”

“Proceed.”

Gritting her teeth and holding her breath, Eve braced herself for reassignment. One of the warnings Loret had mentioned a few minutes ago had told her just what Mokollik planned to propose. The assignment wasn’t one any female agent in her right mind would look forward to.

I guess that means I’m officially not in my right mind.

“This is hardly the first time Major Cartwright has run amok of Protectorate law,” Mokollik reminded the tribunal. Eve had to stifle the urge to thank him for his help. “And her superiors on the PSF are quite aware of her propensity for making trouble and flouting orders. Rest assured, we are keeping, and plan to maintain, a close watch on the accused.”

How sweet. And here I never thought to get you anything.

“However, as much as the PSF would support the idea of seeing Major Cartwright forced to account for her behavior, I regret that we cannot afford to lose her skills at this time. As you know, rebellion forces have been escalating the frequency and scale of their attacks against the Protectorate. They pose an immediate and substantial threat against the freedom and security enjoyed by the two hundred federated worlds of the United Interstellar Protectorate. The threat cannot be ignored, and the danger cannot be understated.”

The rhetoric wasn’t new and hardly surprised Eve. All it did at this point was bore her. And make her faintly queasy. She honestly just wished he’d get on with it. Being publicly dishonored by the very profession you’d dedicated your whole adult life to serving didn’t need drawing out.

She kept a wary eye on Mokollik and kept her mouth shut.

“The Protectorate Security Force has recently determined that the rebellion may be preparing to launch a strike on the penal colony at Rauka where several of their most important leaders are being held pending Protectorate trials. It is our belief that this strike is being organized and abetted by a free trader, operating under a nonpolitical merchant freighter’s license in strict violation of Protectorate law.”

The general delivered his speech in the sort of war-mongering, rile-up-the-masses voice Protectorate officials usually reserved for political rallies and executions, but the information sounded promising. He was gearing up for a big finish—one Eve had a sneaking suspicion she wouldn’t like.

“We are aware of the seriousness of the rebel threat, General Mokollik,” Loret said, furrowing his brows into an expression of stately concern. “However, I am afraid I don’t follow how it pertains directly to the major.”

Mokollik glanced at Eve, and the cold, malicious gleam in his pale, unsettling eyes made her insides cringe. “Major Cartwright may be a troublemaker, but she’s a competent agent at a time when we need all the investigators we have.”

The high judge frowned in earnest now and sent Eve a disgruntled glare. “General, I’m going to stop you here before you go any further. If you intend to ask the tribunal to excuse the major from disciplinary action, I’m afraid you’ll be wasting your breath. She needs to learn that there are rules in this world she must follow, no matter how much they conflict with her personal whims.”

Mokollik’s smile twisted into something truly ugly and deeply disturbing. “I have no desire to spare Major Cartwright from disciplinary action; however, I would ask that it be delayed for a short time pending the completion of a particular assignment. One that will make use of her…unique talents.”

Eve felt his gaze slide over her uniformed skin like clammy fingers and suppressed a shudder of distaste. That look had very little to do with her UC training and a hell of a lot to do with her tits. Ick. She shuddered to think that gaze might contain any attention more personal than the kind with which he routinely cursed all female agents, but she couldn’t help thinking he seemed especially creepy today. Who had spiked his protein pack this morning?

“You realize this is highly irregular, General.”

Mokollik turned back to meet Loret’s frown. “I do, but quashing the rebellion must be our highest priority, and Major Cartwright is going to help us do just that.”

Chapter Two

In all her years as an investigator with the Protectorate Security Force, Eve had worn many covers. She’d posed as an assassin, a smuggler, a pirate, a diplomat, a courier, assorted grungy peasant types, and even royalty. She’d cheated, lied, manipulated, and stolen for the greater good, but she had never whored for her cause.

It looked like that was about to change.

“Posing as an Ankharan nitara will put you in very close contact with your subject.”

Colonel Burton seemed oblivious to the double entendre in that sentence, but then she supposed it could be a self-defense mechanism. She couldn’t picture him wanting to have sex on the brain while he informed one of his officers she’d be posing as a sex slave during her next undercover assignment.

She sat in the interview chamber at the PSF Headquarters, Sector 12 Prime, wondering what the hell she’d gotten herself into and why the hell she’d agreed to it. Not that she’d had much choice, but somehow that thought didn’t lend her the amount of comfort she supposed it should.

“And may I ask who the subject will be? Since I’ll be in such close contact with him, after all.” She kept her voice neutral, but her mind raced. There were close to a dozen men at the top of the Protectorate’s high suspicion list, and any one of them would be worth the PSF’s while to bait into this particular trap.

“At this moment we believe our efforts will be best spent investigating a supposed free trader. Michael Taggart.”

Eve froze. “Taggart?”

Burton nodded. “I presume you’ve heard of him.”

Eve could barely hear anything over the pounding of her heart.

“Everyone has,” she finally said as she forced her grip to relax on the arms of her chair. “He’s number one on the HS list. They’ve designed training exercises around his fighting style.”

“Precisely. He’s a threat, but one against whom we’ve had no proof. Until now.” He referred back to his computer screen. “Your immediate goal is to access the computer systems on Taggart’s ship and plant the false data about the Rauka prison. It’s all on the chip I’ve given you, cleverly concealed to appear as a communication from known rebel leader Rose Grant. We’ve digitally replicated her image and linked it to a sonically mirrored voice recording. The technicians who developed it have assured us that it will be impossible to detect as forgery.”

Impossible. Right.

“With all due respect, sir,” Eve managed, hoping the colonel wouldn’t guess how little respect she really felt was due him at that moment, “I fail to see why such a plant couldn’t be accomplished by a tech at a fuel station or something. It seems to me that the potentially long-term mission you’re talking about might be something more than strictly necessary.”

Burton blinked like a fruit bat in fluorescent lights. “Well…ahem…the…uh…the long-term goal, of course, is to collect sufficient evidence against Captain Taggart to warrant an arrest on grounds of treaty violation, conspiracy to commit treason, and lending aid to the rebellion.” He smoothed a glistening palm over his receding hairline. “Due to the sensitive nature of the mission, you’ll have to rely mainly on your own training and intelligence. The Protectorate can’t afford a nasty public relations backlash if this mission becomes common knowledge.”

Eve forced her initial reaction down and pursed her lips. “Which translates as, ‘You’re on your own, so don’t expect any support.’ Correct?”

Colonel Burton frowned. “I wouldn’t put it that way.”

“Oh. So I’ll have backup, equipment, and supplies as appropriate to someone of my rank on a covert op?”

“This is not an ordinary operation, Major.” Eve watched as the man all but squirmed in his seat. “We’re talking about some delicate situations here.”

“I see.”

“We’ve tried to accommodate your cover to make you as comfortable as possible, even basing it on your own name,” Burton said after a brief, awkward silence. “Officially you’ll be Evenaril, which is a traditional Ankharan name meaning ‘soft welcome.’”

He paused, blinked down at the terminal he was reading from, and coughed. He gave a discreet tug at his collar before continuing. “Apparently that’s a name that’s been given to nitarai in the past, though it’s not currently considered to be in vogue. You’ll be known by everyone other than the princeling himself as his newest nitara, recently released from your training by the temple mistresses. Prince Jaru knows what’s going on and will see you’re treated according to Protectorate customs of citizen rights until such time as you leave his custody.”

“And then?” It felt a little like shooting fish in a barrel, but Eve couldn’t resist taunting him, just to see if he had any real concept of the assignment he was sending her on. “You’ve just told me I’m going to be posing as a sex slave on a planet so culturally removed from the rest of federated space that it barely made it into the Protectorate. So I’m supposed to not worry what’s going to happen to me when I do ‘leave his custody’?”

Colonel Burton shifted in his seat. “Yes, well, ahem.” He cleared his throat. “Once you leave the palace, you’ll be considered to be deep undercover, so of course, contact between you and other representatives of the PSF will be strictly prohibited. Anything of the sort could potentially compromise the mission.”

“Unlike the whole ‘become a piece of property, allow myself to be given as a gift, and then spend however much time the PSF sees fit to order serving as a sex slave to a man who’s basically a space pirate and is suspected to be a rebel conspirator’ thing. Which apparently is the mission.”

She just wanted to make sure they were clear there.

Burton crossed his arms over his chest, tucked in his chin, and shrugged. “Infiltrating Taggart’s operation is crucial to preventing the rebel assault on Rauka that we believe is being planned. Lives may be at stake here, Major Cartwright.”

“Forgive my lack of a gung-ho spirit, Colonel,” she said, her eyes narrowing so far she was surprised she could still see, “but I’m the one who’s going to be saving those lives by giving blowjobs to a criminal. You want me to do a little happy dance?”

The colonel’s face turned a flagrant shade of puce, his mouth flapped open and shut like a fish, and he stuttered for a full thirty seconds before he managed to lodge his protest. “Major!” He looked about as shocked as an old virgin at a public orgy. “I see no cause for your crudity. This is a serious military exercise, and of course we at Security Force Command expect you to conduct yourself in a manner suited to your rank and affiliation.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll be sure to salute on my downstrokes.” Eve shoved herself out of her chair and gave the little creep a sardonic salute on her way to the door.

She kept her expression blank all the way back to her quarters, and even then she carefully scanned for surveillance and disposed of the two tiny bugs as they deserved. In the toilet.

Only then did she collapse back onto her bunk and groan.

She wondered what the PSF would have been prepared to do next in its quest to force her to resign her commission. Short of actually selling her to sex traders, she couldn’t think of a lower blow, not that this sort of thing surprised her anymore. The Protectorate had lost its ability to surprise her, and wasn’t that a sad statement?

She thought about her fail-safe, the last, secret option she’d been hoping never to have to use. Her loyalty to her employers had always been absolute, but where was the reciprocation? She had followed orders that had made her squirm, ones that had raised the hair on her arms, then ones that had turned her stomach. How much more was she supposed to take? Even with the last six months of her life leading her here, this assignment felt a lot like the Powers’ way of introducing her to a turning point in her life. Via an armored field boot to her backside. She hadn’t been ready for this, but it looked like the Powers didn’t care. It was time to make a few calls and see if she could salvage something worthwhile out of this nightmare assignment.

Still scowling, she took a deep breath and blew it out through pursed lips. Lying around wouldn’t accomplish anything. She rose from her bunk and dropped to her knees to reach for the slim, silver case hidden in the slot she’d made beneath the bed frame. “Never say die,” she muttered, popping open the catches to lift the narrow lid and gaze on the tiny black compuchip inside. “And for damned sure never say uncle.”

* * * *

“If I wasn’t right for this assignment to begin with, they should have given it to someone else,” Eve griped, resisting the urge to rub the skin of her cheek where it still tingled from the application of the nitaral tattoo the cover coordinator had ordered. Undercover was one thing, but she had forgotten how little cover this particular assignment would be affording. “There’s no way I’m letting you play with my tits.”

Samantha Krall, the cover artist in charge of effecting Eve’s transformation from PSF major to Ankharan nitara, grumbled something vaguely obscene and glared at her recalcitrant subject. “I don’t want to play with them,” she snapped. “I just need to make them a little bigger.”

“Bigger? For God sakes, I already have trouble getting uniforms to fit, and you want to make them bigger?”

Samantha planted her hands on her hips and dug in her heels. “Since the average nitara you’re going to be standing next to is at least three to four sizes larger than you, yes, I do.”

“No way.” Eve brushed aside the instrument tray that had been positioned over her stomach and sat up on the table. She swung her legs over the side and jumped to her feet, ignoring the way her muscles and skin protested their recent treatments. “You’ve already lightened my skin, sculpted my muscles, redistributed my fat cells, widened my eyes, and taken off every callus I’ve ever had. Enough. If I don’t make the grade now, I’m not ever going to, so you can lay off.”

“Don’t take your crap out on me, Cartwright,” the artist growled, seeming oblivious to the fact that the woman she scolded was three inches taller, twenty pounds heavier, and infinitely meaner. Not to mention that for a living, Samantha altered peoples’ appearances using the latest in cosmetic surgery, makeup, prosthetics, and cellular manipulation, while Eve altered peoples’ appearances by planting her fist in their faces. “I’m not the one who assigned you to this, but I’m damned if I’ll let you keep me from doing my job. If you botch this operation, it is not going down in history as being my fault.”

Crossing her arms defensively over her more than adequate breasts, Eve glared at her coworker and normally her friend. “I’m not going to botch anything. Everything is going just like it’s supposed to. I just don’t see why the breasts I have—which have never gotten any complaints before, by the way—are suddenly not the breasts I need.”

“They’re fine for everyday, Eve, but this is a special occasion,” Samantha said. “You need something bolder for this.”

“Can’t you just make me some sort of top that would make them look bolder?”

Samantha raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips. “That could work. If you were going to be wearing a top, that is.”

“What?”

Samantha sighed, crossed over to the computer terminal on the other side of the room, and typed in a command. In a moment the large viewscreen mounted beside it went from a blank square to an image of a breathtaking woman with perfect features and a lush, sensual body designed for absolutely nothing more than giving pleasure. She was also naked except for a gauzy veil that hung from a jeweled belt, covering only about six inches of skin at the front and back of her body. “A typical Ankharan nitara.”

Eve shrugged, still sulking. “Yeah, so? I’ve seen them before.”

“But you clearly haven’t paid attention. Nor, apparently, have you done your research yet.”

The sarcasm in Samantha’s voice had Eve narrowing her eyes. “I’m scheduled for a subliminals session whenever you decide you’re done playing with my tits.”

“Then let me give you a crash course,” the artist said, turning back to the screen. “The nitarai are very highly trained and extremely valuable members of a slave class on the planet Ankhar. They are raised from childhood for a life as the sexual servants of the ruling elite on their home planet, and as—”

“Gimme a break, Sam. I know all that. Save the spiel and let me—”

“And as such,” Samantha continued, talking over Eve as if the other woman had never spoken, “they have evolved into a highly specialized race of their own. Only the most sought after nitarai are allowed to breed, and then their offspring are disqualified from carrying on the tradition if they prove less desirable than the standard. They’re farmed out as household and public servants instead.”

Eve’s scowl deepened, and she looked up at the viewscreen with a sneer. “And we still let the slimeballs into the Protectorate. Is it any wonder there’s a rebellion brewing?”

Walking over to stand next to the screen, Samantha began to point to it like a professor lecturing to a class of future alien culturists. “Standards of beauty among the Ankharans are surprisingly similar to those of Terran-descended humans, though considering the currently accepted theories in evolution, it’s not such a huge shock.”

“Look, can we skip the Intro to Cultural Comparison bit and finish my lame cover before I’m too old to carry it off?”

“Like most known humanoid races, the Ankharans value ultrafemininity in their women, especially in nitarai. If you look, you can see that in the exaggerated silhouette of this example. The hips have a distinct flare, and the breasts are large in comparison to the figure’s narrow torso.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m going to let you puff mine up like a couple of balloons.”

“Coloring is less important to the Ankharans than the overall dramatic appearance of the nitarai. In other words they aren’t particularly partial to blondes or brunettes, but they do prefer women with dramatic coloration, like very dark hair and very pale skin, or vice versa.”

Eve glanced down at her newly lightened skin tone, all traces of tan gone. She wouldn’t have minded that so much if it hadn’t meant her freckles stood out in sharp relief now, after she’d spent her entire life trying to get the damned things to blend in. Frowning, she decided to see if Sam could smooth those out too while she was at it.

“Eye color is the same,” Samantha continued. “They like dramatic jewel tones, but since they don’t quite have our level of technology, they haven’t figured out how to get them on a consistent basis, so they settle for what contrasts well with the overall package. Hair, though, is always kept long. The female offspring of nitarai are forbidden to cut their hair until they are reviewed at the age of thirteen. At that point, if they’re released from training, the hair can be cut, but those who are selected to go on as future nitarai must continue to let it grow. Eventually, when the nitara is ready to enter service, it’s usually trimmed to a length between her lower back and the bottom of her buttocks for convenience’s sake.”

Imagining the tangles, Eve made a face and ran a hand through her short, brown-blonde curls. She imagined the hair thing would be next on Sam’s list, and she wasn’t looking forward to it. At least it wasn’t summer on Ankhar. The thought of all the heat that hair would trap in made her wince.

“As I’ve said, breasts are always large.” Samantha glanced pointedly at Eve. “And a nitara in service is forbidden from wearing any garment that may conceal them. The traditional garb is the open skirt shown here, which is called a lya. The belt it hangs from is generally decorated with the sigils and colors of the owner, and the facial tattoo she receives shortly after birth to signify the household into which she is born will later be altered to identify the master she serves.”

Just the sound of words like “owner” and “master” made Eve twitch.

“All right!” she shouted, throwing up her hands and stalking back to the table in the center of the room. “I don’t have time for this lecture. Do whatever the hell you want to me. I have to be at the subliminal lab in three hours.”

With a satisfied smile, Samantha clicked off the viewscreen and headed back to her subject and her tools. “Glad you feel that way, because we’re going to need every minute of those three hours just to make you presentable.”

Eve shot her friend a last glare before closing her eyes. “Just so long as you realize that whatever you do to me today, you’re undoing the minute I get back. Got it?”

“Got it. Now shut up and let me play with your tits.”

Chapter Three

The minute Eve stepped off the shuttle onto Ankharan soil, she knew she had entered a whole new world. She didn’t realize it was hell until two hours later.

“I am Jinilliana,” the woman said when two burly and brick-stupid guards had left Eve in the harem and locked the doors behind them. “I am Prince Jaru’s nitarana, and thus I am responsible for you until you are given to your new master.”

The woman looked as happy about that as Eve was. The nitarana, the harem mistress, had long masses of brown hair, lightly streaked with silver, and pale blue eyes. She looked to be about forty—albeit an extremely well-preserved and perky-titted forty—and wore one of the sourest expressions Eve had ever seen outside of her mirror.

“I do not approve of an outsider posing as one of our most sacred jewels,” Jinilliana continued, as if Eve couldn’t have guessed that, “but so the prince has decreed, and so it shall be. Let us have a look at you.”

Oh, goody. Let’s.

Eve schooled her expression into an impassive mask and stood still while the other woman circled slowly around her.

She felt self-conscious enough about her new appearance without some madam with a power complex staring at her. Considering what she’d looked like two days ago, the way she looked today still scared her every time she passed a mirror, and judging by the public corridors she’d passed through on her way to the harem, the Ankharan people had a great fondness for mirrors.

After so many years Eve had gotten used to looking at the body puberty had given her, so this one, donated by Protectorate cover artists, took some getting used to. Instead of the trim and toned body of a security officer, she now had to adjust to the reflection of an ultrafeminine sex slave with enormous tits and enough hair to clog the warp engines of an alpha-class battle cruiser. Truthfully, if the breasts weren’t threatening to throw her back into a muscle spasm, she’d almost be inclined to say the hair was more annoying. Her usually short, manageable, blonde-brown curls had metamorphosed into a teeming, twining mass of vibrant tendrils, seeming to encompass every color in the human hair spectrum, from lightest blonde to deepest brown to fieriest red. It was kind of cool to look at, she could admit, but if she had a pair of scissors, she’d hack it all off in a nanosecond.

Though come to think of it, she reflected as the nitarana moved back to face her and scowled, if she had a pair of scissors, she might put them to a gorier and yet infinitely more satisfying use first.

“Adequate, I suppose,” the woman said. “Certainly not on par with our native daughters. I suppose an offworlder might be fooled, but it is a good thing you will not be expected to serve an Ankharan man. He would cast you aside in a moment to find a nitara worthy of his ownership.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard you people aren’t real keen on women with brains. Sorry to disappoint.”

The words, uttered through a smile that had more to do with bared teeth than good humor, had little effect on the harem mistress. Jinilliana just pursed her lips and turned away, gesturing for Eve to follow. “Come. We have much work to do if you are to fool even a blind offworlder into believing you were born into the prince’s house.”

Teeth gritted but at least now hidden behind a scowl, Eve followed the other woman from the harem’s spacious entry hall and into the harem itself.

The inner doors opened into a courtyard lush with plant life and bustling with activity. Women lounged on pillows and beside an enormous fountain and the pool into which it fed. All met the Ankharan standard of beauty, all were half-naked, and all looked at Eve as if she were a particularly fascinating little insect.

“Haven’t they ever seen a woman in real clothes before?” Eve grumbled as she hurried behind Jinilliana through the courtyard and down a hall on the other side of the fountain.

“No. They have not, for it is forbidden here.” The nitarana led the way into a large room and closed the door behind them.

The room was private and empty except for a series of the cushions the Ankharans used for seating and the first viewscreen Eve had seen since she’d landed. She looked around the chamber, then back at Jinilliana. “What do we need privacy for?”

“For your education.” The older woman crossed to the viewscreen and programmed something into the terminal beside it. “I imagine you will be difficult enough to instruct without added distractions.”

Eve narrowed her eyes. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

Jinilliana turned to face Eve and raised a supercilious brow. “I have met offworld women like yourself before. They have all been arrogant, unfeminine affronts to nitaral beauty.” Her gaze raked over Eve’s black trousers and matching knit pullover. “I see nothing to convince me you are different.”

“Yeah, well, not all of us can be sour, overblown blots on the history of women’s equality, now can we?”

With their positions clear, the two women stared at each other for a long moment before Jinilliana shrugged. “As I said, such offworld attitudes can stand in the way of learning about our culture. I thought the privacy would aid you while you watch the presentations we have prepared.”

“You’re too kind.”

“I have duties to attend while you watch,” Jinilliana said as she headed for the door. “I will be testing you on the principles illustrated in the training. What you are going to learn in a few hours before a viewscreen normally takes a nitara six months of intensive training with the temple mothers to achieve. I suggest you pay close attention.”

Eve waited until the door closed before making a satisfyingly obscene gesture at it. The idea of that kind of high-handedness from some man’s fuck toy really got her goat. The woman made sex slave training sound as demanding as the courses Eve had taken when she’d joined the force, and that was damned unlikely. Still, locked in a room with no place to go, she might as well watch the damned vids. It would kill time at least.

She barely had time to drag an especially big pillow to the front of the viewscreen before the show started and her ass hit the padded square with a thump.

Holy Powers! This is frickin’ porn!

Eve stared wide-eyed at the images on the screen as the lights in the room dimmed automatically and the computer gradually added sound to the vid it played for her. She struggled briefly to reconcile herself to the idea that this was educational footage. It looks more like deleted scenes from Debbie Does Delta V.

Um, is that what I think it is?

It had to be, because given the context of the activities on the screen, nothing else made sense. Not that the activities on the screen made much sense to her either, but she had to have some point of reference.

She watched in stunned silence as the video began to spin a story of the training of the perfect nitara. They called the girl Liashana when they spoke to her at all, which wasn’t often until she and six others were selected from among all the teenaged girls in her master’s house to begin her training in earnest. Very earnest, from the looks of it.

At least Liashana had been born with the physical attributes Eve lacked, so there was no cellular modification going on for her. Nope, they went straight to work with young Lia, which made Eve frankly uncomfortable but apparently filled the girl with pride and delight. Somehow.

Eve sat forward on her cushion, watching with mingled fascination and repulsion as the temple mistresses took Lia from her home and brought her to their training facility on the outskirts of Ankhar’s capital city. The things Lia experienced there drew Eve into a world she had never imagined, one where women saw nothing unusual in their status as glorified playthings, where fathers were known only to sons, and the native language provided no word for daughter. She didn’t quite understand how a woman could take pride in the sort of life a nitara lived, but Lia obviously did so. She applied herself studiously to her training—training that made Eve’s eyes widen and her ass squirm on the cushion. She’d never imagined a class of women, all three-quarters naked, all on their knees before life-size statues of aroused men being instructed in oral sex techniques as if they were taking classes in flower arrangement. It boggled her mind.

But if the classes in oral sex, sexual positions, Ankharan sexual etiquette, and nitaral deportment boggled her mind, the last part of the three-hour vid shattered it.

As her training came to an end, the cameras followed Lia learning that her owner—her biological father, even if Ankharan custom failed to recognize the relationship—had sold her to the man who would be her dashim, her master. Eve tried to understand the young woman’s sense of excitement but was still struggling with it when the vid cut to Lia’s offering ceremony.

Here, the temple mistresses had informed their charges, the newly released nitara met her master for the first time even as she pledged her life, her body, and her independence to him. Here she subjugated herself to him to prove her “worth” as his personal servant. Here she took all the things she’d learned in those eye-opening classes and put them to use for the first time.

Eve held her breath as she watched Lia step proudly into her dashim’s receiving room. She could almost imagine herself in the girl’s position, breasts bared, hair like a curtain down her back, pussy barely concealed by the light gauze of her lya. She felt the weight of a golden belt around her own hips, the shift of air against her own skin as if she were the one who crossed that soft expanse of carpet separating her from the man who had bought her.

She felt the same carpet under her knees as she knelt at his feet, bowing down to rest her cheek on the floor mere inches from his slippers. She felt the stretching of her shoulder muscles as she extended her arms out to the sides, palms up to signify her defenselessness against him.

The loud crack of his clapping hands made her jump just as Lia’s muscles jerked on the viewscreen. She had become the girl in the vid, and she watched so intently she didn’t even blink as she slid her hand inside the fabric of her trousers to burrow between the lips of her dripping pussy.

The dashim said something traditional and commanding, but Eve’s mind barely registered the words. Her focus remained on their actions as Lia rose gracefully to her feet, gaze modestly cast down, and spoke her response even as her hands reached for her master’s trousers, opening the fastenings and lifting his cock from the fabric prison.

The man was only half-erect, but Eve was positively dripping. Her moisture coated her fingers and made them slip smoothly over her engorged clit. She worked her fingers in tight circles around it while Lia finished undressing her dashim and stepped back to wait for his orders. They weren’t long in coming.

“Down,” the dashim ordered, his voice low and musical with the cadence of the Ankharan language. The room’s clever speakers made him sound as if he spoke directly in Eve’s ear. Her breathing became faster, heavier. She moved her fingers more quickly as she imagined herself in Lia’s place. Eve’s master had a different face, his features harder, more angular than those of a man of Ankhar, but the expression he wore in her mind showed just as much arrogance.

She—Eve? Lia? Eve could barely tell the difference—obeyed instantly, dropping to all fours on the floor in front of him, back arched, head bowed. Waiting to please him.

* * * *

He reached down, buried one lean hand in her hair, and dragged her head up until she strained to meet his gaze. His own shone with excitement and arousal as he grasped his cock in his free hand and guided it to her lips.

She opened to him immediately, humming happily as she sucked him deep. He had not given her permission to look away, so she kept her eyes on his for a long, uncomfortable moment until the pressure of his hand in her hair changed, forcing her farther down on his cock, sliding the swollen head deeper into her throat. She gratefully set about pleasing him, her mind consumed with his taste, his scent, the feel of him in her mouth, filling her, feeding her. She laved her tongue along the underside of his shaft, growling low in her throat until the sound vibrated through her palate and around his hard flesh.

When her lips brushed against his fingers, he released his grip on his shaft and used both hands to grip her hair, guiding her motions into the rhythm he desired. He pushed deeper on every stroke, fucking her mouth with a steady rhythm while she grew hotter and wetter. She felt desperate for him, needing him inside her pussy, plugging up the vast emptiness in her body, but her dashim had other plans, and his wishes took precedence.

Drawing his cock from her mouth on a groan, he grabbed her hand and yanked her to her feet, dragging her across the room to a low table. She felt the familiar weight of his calloused fingers guiding her to her knees, pressing against her spine until she lay draped over the table with her knees balanced on a cushion on the floor. He stretched her arms high above her head and ordered her to keep them there, then spread her thighs wide until she sprawled lewdly open before him. She shivered, feeling the cool wood press against her heated skin, smelling the fresh, waxy scent of the furniture polish mingling with the sharp tang of her own arousal and the spicy musk of her dashim’s skin.

He knelt behind her, pressing against her until his cock slid between her thighs and nudged her dripping entrance. His chest draped warmly over her back, surrounding Eve with heat and earthy, male intent. He wrapped the trailing length of her hair around one fist and pulled her back toward him as he began to press slowly inside her.

“Welcome to my house, my jewel,” he whispered against her ear, and she felt his breath teasing her skin. “May your service be long and rewarding.”

* * * *

On the screen, male flesh began to pound steadily into female, but Eve had allowed her eyes to drift closed, her head thrown back, her fingers buried hard in her cunt as she gasped against the need that consumed her. It had been too long since she’d felt the touch of her lover, and the changes Samantha had wrought in her body had left her overly sensitized and restless. The vid had pushed her over the edge.

Lost in the scene she’d been viewing, she pictured her own body draped over the table, pictured a familiar male body pounding into her from behind. She’d never submitted to a man the way she’d seen the nitara do, couldn’t fathom why it should leave her aching and desperate, but it did. She needed release, needed it badly.

She thrust her hand faster, teeth clenched, hating the fact that her fingers couldn’t come close to filling her. She wanted to be filled and stretched again.

Wanted, damn it, to be the nitara in the vid, with her own dashim ramming relentlessly into her.

Hovering on the precipice of orgasm, she shoved her fingers deep into her cunt and brought her other hand down, pinched her clit between shaking fingers, rubbed and tugged until her breath stopped and her pussy clenched and she went sailing over the edge, coming in time to the ecstatic groans of the figures on the viewscreen.

For several long minutes she lay there, dazed, her hands still pinned tight between her clenched thighs as she wondered what the hell had just happened. Since when had she gotten hot over the idea of being some man’s fuck toy?

She wiped her hands on the damp skin of her abdomen, then jumped to her feet and tugged her trousers back into place. For Powers’ sake, she was here to do a frickin’ job, and she’d damned well better get it done before she started to believe this male superiority crap.

As soon as she was back in civilization, she decided, she was getting her head examined.

Before it was too late.

Chapter Four

The subliminal tapes piped through Eve’s sleep cycle for two days running had taught her the Ankharan language so thoroughly she could converse with philosophers and street thugs with seamless grace. They had shown her enough intricacies of culture that she could dine with kings—if nitarai were allowed to do that kind of thing—and they had informed her of so many different animal and plant forms, she could teach an Ankharan biology seminar. But not a single one of those tapes had taught her how to control her temper when Prince Jaru looked her over like a twenty-credit whore and asked if she wanted to join his harem for real.

Of course, it didn’t help that her temper still hadn’t subsided after that damned training vid incident.

Fighting back a snarl, Eve forced her head to bend with deferential grace, which wasn’t easy considering she still hadn’t quite gotten used to the weight of the extra meter of hair Samantha had crafted for her.

“You honor me with your invitation, Your Eminence,” she bit out through clenched teeth and a syrupy-sweet fake smile. “But I am afraid my duties to the Protectorate prevent me from accepting so high a measure of praise.”

The princeling shrugged, his narrow shoulders jutting out beneath the heavy golden fabric of his ceremonial robes. His hands curled in the hair of the nitarai who sat obediently at his feet, and he leaned back in his cushions while a third slave brushed his hair from his forehead and pressed her huge, bare breasts against his arm. Looking at those overblown attributes, Eve could almost think Samantha had listened to reason and not made her tits as big as custom dictated. But then she felt the newly familiar twinge in her protesting back muscles and resumed plotting to make someone pay.

The prince’s muddy-colored gaze ranged over her again, sweeping insultingly from head to toe. She knew that on Ankhar, he had every right to ogle any nitara he damned well pleased, but she didn’t have to like it. She had the fiercest urge to give him the finger but knew that would be about as culturally acceptable as giving in to her desire to cross her arms over her naked chest and mug one of the princeling’s guards for his leggings. She’d never have guessed how drafty a damned palace could be until she’d entered this one and been dressed in the traditional lya of a nitara.

Her clothing consisted of the beaten gold belt carved with a geometric motif that signaled her supposed origins in the prince’s house. The spaces for jewels and other decorations lay bare, waiting for her new “master” to provide them. The white gauze “skirt”—and she wanted to laugh every time she called it that—seemed to shift and sway in an invisible breeze, probably the same breeze that kept her nipples perpetually hardened. Of course, she figured the new piercings that decorated those protrusions might have something to do with the hardness, but she wasn’t feeling all that picky about assigning blame at the moment. Her shit list now boasted a population in the thousands, and the tech who had driven the intricate gold circlets through her anesthetized nipples wasn’t even her chief target. Oh no. She had a chief target firmly in mind, the person responsible for her place in this mission, and she couldn’t wait to see the bastard again so she could wreak havoc on him.

“Very well,” Jaru said in the high, rolling tones of the Ankharan language. Despite the tongue’s naturally lyrical quality, he sounded like a three-year-old deprived of a sweet. “If you won’t be staying, then at least stay out of the way and quiet until your new owner gets here. No matter whom you might think you are, I’ll not have anyone saying that a nitara of my house was so ill-trained as to call attention to herself while the prince tried to conduct business.”

Only an incredible exercise of will and the distraction of Jinilliana taking her arm and leading her to a cushion beside and behind the prince’s seat kept Eve from shooting the little jerk a glare sharp enough to earn her a beheading. She was afraid her tongue would be scarred from biting it so hard, but at least it kept her from saying something she’d regret.

Actually I probably wouldn’t regret it, but only because I’d be too dead.

Settling down on the cushion, she caught herself trying to cross her arms and forced them back to her sides, ignoring the curious looks the prince’s other nitarai were shooting her way.

“It’s not real,” she muttered to herself, earning even more curious stares. “I can get through this.”

She really hoped she was right about that. Somehow the bright idea she’d had about making something good come out of this mission didn’t seem so bright when she had the tits and the lack of clothes that went along with it. How could the hasty plan she’d concocted there in her rooms at PSF headquarters possibly apply here and now in the field?

She dwelled on that thought throughout the morning while the prince held court, which didn’t help her relax any. She half listened to the conversations around her, but she kept her gaze trained firmly on the doors to the massive Great Hall. She knew at any minute Taggart could walk through the door and her game would begin in earnest. It would have been nice if the Force had scheduled her a little more time to get over her culture shock, but apparently they thought going from a culture where she held a position of power to one where the only positions she could legally hold were sexual and vaguely acrobatic shouldn’t faze her.

And therein lies the bugbear known as job dissatisfaction. Ain’t it a pisser?

Forcing her expression to remain vacuous, as the nitarana had instructed—though she hadn’t used that precise adjective—Eve glanced at the women around her and wondered if any of their vacuous expressions were as forced as hers. After all, could anyone really stay content—or even nonhomicidal—in this kind of life?

She tried not to squirm and tried not to think about the traditional show of submission she’d have to display when the prince gifted her to her new “master.” A nitara born and raised might have no problem with it, but just the thought made Eve feel vaguely nauseated, so she added thinking about it to the list of things she was trying not to do, and that left her with no distractions except to contemplate her navel and the state of this stupid mission.

Scowling on the inside, Eve turned her hard-won placid expression to the hall and watched as the household slaves finished setting up the long feasting tables on either side of the central aisle that led to the prince’s dais. As soon as the last flower had been arranged and the last cushion plumped, the guards flung the doors open to admit the throng of nobles and nitarai waiting to enter.

Eve honestly couldn’t get used to the sight of all those mostly naked women with their eyes demurely downcast and their exaggerated bodies kept a careful two feet behind and to the side of their owners. She supposed she should be grateful Ankharan custom didn’t require the slaves to be collared and chained, but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to it. Slavery was slavery, and subjugation was subjugation. Her thoroughly modern, Protectorate-born mind just couldn’t wrap around the idea of a person as property of another person based on nothing more than an accident of birth. It was way too weird.

Of course, so was the idea that in a few minutes she would be the property of another person based on nothing more than this stupid assignment. And the minute her subconscious tried to point out she hadn’t been complaining while she masturbated to the images in the training vid, she knocked the sucker back into the ether with a mental stunner blast and went back to ignoring that little incident.

“Do you recall your instructions?” Jinilliana’s voice hissing in her ear jolted Eve back to reality and made her mouth tighten.

“Yes,” she whispered back. How could I forget? I saw it on disc, and that kind of porn costs an arm and a leg in the civilized world.

Jinilliana studied her though narrowed eyes but gave a curt nod and trained her gaze back on the gathering crowd. “Good. The ceremony will begin at the prince’s command. Be ready to answer his summons with great speed. His guards are ungentle with disobedient nitarai.”

Gee, I can hardly wait.

Forcing her chin a notch higher, Eve perched on her pillow and almost wished they could hurry up and get this whole thing over with.

Be careful what you wish for.

Chapter Five

Eve had about ten seconds after that thought flitted through her head before the doors swung open again and two new figures joined the throng. She had to tilt her head at an odd angle to see through the crowd, which was on its feet, applauding as the newcomers appeared in their midst. One figure seemed to draw their attention like a magnet.

Michael Taggart.

Eve recognized his face as well as her own. Almost any officer in the Protectorate Security Force would have, considering he and the man at his side constituted the two most closely watched free traders in the known worlds. His unproven but widely rumored smuggling had amassed him quite a healthy fortune, they said, but the Protectorate kept a close eye on him because of the ties they suspected he had to the expanding rebel forces. Women kept an eye on him for an entirely different reason.

The man could redefine the word “yum.”

Six feet and two inches of rock-hard muscle decorated a body that looked like it had been sculpted by aesthetic specialists, though all accounts denied it. No one should be that perfect through simple genetics, but Taggart was. His powerful frame concealed a keen and aggressive mind that could only be glimpsed through occasional sparks in his stormy gray eyes. Combine all that with hair so thick and dark no man ought to keep it to himself, and Taggart had earned almost as much notoriety from being a sex symbol as he had from being a criminal.

Eve still counted that as a point against him.

Of course, if she were to dislike Taggart based on his looks, she’d have to draw the same conclusion about his companion, Eric Deacon. Deacon possessed the brawny, bulging muscles of a ring fighter—an occupation he’d supposedly tried in his youth—but his quick wit and talent with a star chart made him a better navigator than a brain basher. Not that he still wouldn’t bash in the brain of anyone dumb enough to piss him off, but these days people talked more about his exploits with women than with other fighters. Even larger than Taggart, Deacon had so many muscles he should have looked clumsy, but nothing seemed to take away from his inherent grace. Coffee-colored skin shifted and rippled when he moved, and his whiskey-bright eyes caught the attention of more than one nitara in Prince Jaru’s chamber. Deacon gave them all a broad wink as he halted beside Taggart in front of their host.

The men swept Jaru a pair of bows Eve would have called mocking but that the prince seemed to like, judging by the way he preened. No one else in the room seemed to notice the traders’ air of sarcasm, either. The tables that lined the chamber’s central aisle overflowed with Ankharan nobility, and they all looked on the new arrivals as if they were some sort of minor deities.

Yeah, the gods of big egos and illegal trading.

Taggart seemed to be waiting for a break in the commotion before he spoke, but it didn’t come until the prince held up his hand, gesturing for silence.

The trader looked around the assemblage with a raised eyebrow before turning back to the prince. “I wasn’t expecting a party, Jaru. Is this all for little ole me?”

Eve sat up a little straighter on her cushions. The sarcastic tone in Taggart’s voice didn’t seem to fit with the image of benevolent messenger of hope the natives had painted. Since her arrival Eve had heard all about the good, kind, and generous Taggart who was coming to Ankhar on a mission of mercy to deliver needed vaccines to a people who had just diagnosed their first cases of Elsen’s virus. This man’s voice didn’t make him sound like a benefactor. It made him sound like a pirate.

It made her wonder what he was up to.

It hadn’t been hard to understand why Jaru would honor Taggart with a gift of a nitara for bringing the medicines, considering the seriousness of the health threat. The last known Elsen’s virus outbreak had been on Diego Prime and had killed three-quarters of the planet’s population before it had been contained and vaccines administered to the survivors. If there was more than an isolated case on Ankhar, a hundred thousand credits and a sex slave or twenty was a cheap price to pay for treatment that could prevent the same thing from happening here. Too bad Eve had to be the damned sex slave in question.

Why couldn’t anyone think of a better way to accomplish this mission? One that doesn’t involve me, Taggart, and Ankharan pledging rituals.

The prince rose from his seat and strode down the steps from his dais to stand before his guests. “You are not usually one to refuse festivities given in your honor, Captain Taggart.” He eyed the other man with his lizard-cold gaze. “Surely you do not mean to tell me you are displeased with this humble offering from my people?”

“Not at all.” Taggart hooked his thumbs in his belt and met the prince’s gaze. His fingertips tapped the leather right above the holster where his sidearm would have hung. Apparently the prince’s guards didn’t want anyone carrying weapons around the annoying little prick. So much for subtlety, Eve mused.

“I can always enjoy a good party,” the trader continued, “but your people didn’t need to go to these lengths. After all, you and I already agreed on a price for my services.”

From her vantage point Eve could see both Taggart’s face and the prince’s, and she could see the prince wasn’t happy. Since her mission briefing had told her exactly what Taggart’s price was, an unhappy prince failed to surprise her. Jaru didn’t strike her as the type to give up anything with good grace, not even things that didn’t really belong to him.

Jaru pulled himself up to his full, if unimpressive height and glared at his people’s savior. “Your gall astounds me, Captain. Our nitarai are treasures among our people, not some sort of commodity to be demanded in payment for a debt.”

Taggart’s expression remained amused and mildly curious. “How nice for you. And I can assure you I’m honored to be a little harbinger of progress to the Ankharan culture.” Behind the humor his face hardened and his smile turned more feral than friendly. “Change happens, Jaru, and a deal is a deal.”

They faced off like duelers for a moment before Jaru broke, cutting their eye contact and turning away from the smuggler. “The Monarch of Ankhar does not renege on his promises, or his ‘deals,’ Captain. You will receive that which was promised you. The credits were transferred to your accounts as soon as your cargo was unloaded.”

The prince strode back to his seat and clapped his hands. Unfortunately Eve hesitated a second too long, because two guards moved forward, each taking her by an arm while she scrambled to her feet.

“Hey, watch it,” she mumbled under her breath, only to be promptly ignored.

The men didn’t even give her the chance to straighten her—ha!—skirt before they half led, half dragged her from among the other assembled nitarai and toward the top of the dais steps. Depositing her in front of the prince with an unfriendly shove—probably trying to remind her of her “place”—they backed away, leaving Eve with an almost uncontrollable urge to glare at someone, and the prince was her only available target. Bastards.

A discreet cough from Jinilliana reminded Eve of the proper protocol she’d learned in her crash course. It also threatened to upset her tenuous scowl-control mechanisms. Mentally counting to ten, she took a deep breath and swept the prince a shaky version of a nitara’s traditional bow of obeisance, bending low from the waist until her nose touched her legs and her hair swept a veil against the marble floor. It was an annoying and slightly painful pose to maintain, but she preferred it to the bow she’d be expected to give to her new owner. Gritting her teeth, she waited for the clap that would tell her she was allowed to rise. It was a long time coming.

Damn it, he’s prolonging this deliberately just to keep my ass on display in front of this whole roomful of people. Bastard.

At the sound of the clap, she straightened carefully, feeling the blood rushing out of her head where it had just pooled. She kept her face blank, but the smug expression on Jaru’s had her cursing up a storm on the inside. The little shit.

He looked over her head to the smuggler at the bottom of the dais. “Here is the remainder of your promised price, Captain.” He sneered. “A nitara from my own house. I believe this one is called…” He paused, as if searching his memory or consulting a crib sheet. “Evenaril.”

He waved his hand at Eve in a shooing motion, and she resisted the urge to bite his lazy fingertips, nodding her head in deference instead. Taking a deep breath, she turned on her heel and padded on bare feet down the long stairway to the main floor of the reception hall.

In the silence of the room, even the sound of her soft skin against the cool marble seemed to echo, as did the gentle chiming of the tiny bells the nitarana had ordered woven into her hair. When she stepped off the last stair, she moved forward with gritted teeth to stand directly before her new “owner.” Or new potential owner, anyway. According to Ankharan custom, since she was being given away as goods in return for services, Taggart could just decide he didn’t like the look of her and demand the prince give him someone else. Of course, if he did that, Eve thought she might just have to kill him.

Keeping her gaze on the empty space beyond Taggart’s right shoulder, Eve assumed the nitaral equivalent of at attention—the presentation pose. Shoulders squared to thrust her breasts forward, she lifted her head so that her face remained clearly visible for inspection but kept her eyes lowered submissively. Her screaming back muscles stiffened into a rigid broomstick posture, and her arms were held out and away from her body. Her feet were braced shoulder-width apart, and her pelvis canted slightly forward. She felt like a piece of produce on display at market. In fact, what she looked like bore some striking similarities to a juicy plum.

Even though she wasn’t looking directly at him, Eve could sense Taggart’s eyes on her and caught the movement of his arms folding tight across his muscular chest as he leaned back to survey his payment. He made small, noncommittal humming sounds while he looked her over, and out of the corner of her eye Eve thought she saw his lips purse.

“I don’t know, Jaru,” Taggart finally said, shaking his head and tilting it to one side. “She looks a little…scrawny.”

Scrawny?

“Her breasts are perhaps a bit too small,” Jaru agreed, making Eve and her back muscles ready to cheerfully tear out his kidneys, pump them full of thirty pounds of deadweight, and sew them to the front of his chest to see how he liked it. “But she possesses a most unusual coloring, you must admit. Her hair appears as a rainbow of precious metals, and her entire body might have been dusted with gold shavings. It is a rare mark of beauty among my people to have such gilded skin.”

So that’s why Sam refused to do away with the freckles. I’m still going to hurt her if I see her after this is all over. Her and a few hundred other people.

“Yeah, well, not among mine,” Taggart countered, beginning to walk around her in a slow circle, examining her from all angles, like a statue he might contemplate purchasing. “Nice ass, I suppose, and the face isn’t bad, but still…” He trailed off. “I’m just not sure.”

Give me ten minutes alone in a locked room with the rebel asshole and a golf club, and I’ll make him sure.

“My nitarana assures me this one is well trained to please you, Captain,” she heard Jaru say in the sort of voice she hadn’t heard since she bought her last used indi-shuttle. “And of course, coming from my own house, she is as fine a specimen as you are likely to find anywhere on Ankhar.”

When the rebel only grunted and continued his perusal, Jaru’s voice turned even oilier.

“Would you perhaps be willing to allow Evenaril to demonstrate her training?”

Taggart had circled completely around her by then, so she saw the look of interest on his face when he tore his gaze from her “too small” breasts and turned back to Jaru. “What did you have in mind?”

Me? Oh, I thought something simple. You know, vivisection. Dismemberment. Blinding. The basics.

“Why not allow her to perform her offering ceremony?” the prince suggested. “Perhaps by demonstrating her talents, she can persuade you where my words fail to do so.”

The slow somersault her stomach performed in that moment almost cracked Eve’s facade of cool composure. Last night’s vids had shown her exactly what the offering ceremony entailed, and it was not something she wanted to do, especially not in a roomful of people. All morning she had been clutching frantically to the reassuring thought that if Taggart accepted her as his payment without argument, the formal offering would never have to happen.

Arrogant prick. He’s getting a highly trained, genetically modified sex slave, and he’s got the nerve to bitch that I’m not good enough? I ought to rip his balls off and wear them as earrings.

Still standing in front of her, Taggart looked directly at Eve, his intense gray gaze meeting her glinting hazel one and holding on like a pair of pliers. Her tactic of staring into space shattered, Eve watched warily as his lips curved into a slow, crooked, sensual smile that made her nipples tighten and her hands clench into fists.

“Now that,” he murmured, his voice so low and gravelly she wondered if he meant for anyone other than her to hear him, “has definite possibilities.”

Chapter Six

Staring into those heated eyes, Eve stood helpless while the mission spun right out of her control and into some weird hell dimension where everything she’d been hoping would never happen had suddenly become a reality. Over the chaos of her thoughts, she heard the prince clap his hands, and she stood silently by while two guards trundled forward bearing a thick sitting cushion and a small carved box, both of which they presented to Taggart before moving silently back to their stations.

Taggart ignored the cushion but accepted the box with a wicked smile, and Eve found herself staring helplessly at the damned thing. She knew precisely what was in it: her symbolic shackles. The new decorations for her lya that would mark her officially as a piece of the trader’s property, along with a portable skin-inker to complete her small facial tattoo with Taggart’s mark.

That is so frickin’ barbaric!

Deciding the part of her that currently wanted to snatch the box out of Taggart’s hands and brain him with it probably didn’t want to think about what else was inside, Eve tore her gaze away and turned it back to the man before her. He nudged the cushion out of the way with the toe of one booted foot and stood in the middle of the floor with casual arrogance, looking more princely than the prince. His black neoleather pants and vest didn’t mesh with his image of respectable free trader, but they went a long way toward bolstering the one of pirate, as did the wicked grin on his face. Eve focused on that grin rather than on their audience of the prince and his entire court, all of whom currently watched them with avid curiosity. She could deal with mad a hell of a lot easier than embarrassed. Especially with Taggart being so Powers-damned helpful.

“Anytime you’re ready, babe.” He smirked, leaning down to place the box on the floor between his feet and folding his arms across his broad, half-bare chest. “I’m not sure about you, but I’m willing to have my mind changed for me.”

Are you willing to have it beaten to a bloody pulp until it runs out your nose?

Taking a deep breath—and figuring it was a good thing nitarai were forbidden to carry weapons—Eve called on all the undercover training she’d ever received and got down to what she did best—becoming someone she wasn’t.

Her personal objections to the entire nitaral system refused to go without a fight, but Eve shoved them aside. She locked them up alongside the memory of how much that system had aroused her during the training vid, making very sure neither thought would interfere with her mission. She’d been assigned to Ankhar to do a job, and she’d do the damned job, like it or not. She’d been an agent too damned long to let her personal discomfort interfere with her assignment, no matter how repulsive she might find the situation.

As she looked at the man in front of her, she couldn’t help imagining all sorts of possibilities for that situation, a few of which bore a startling similarity to the Perils of Liashana, and none of which repulsed her. She studiously ignored them. Keeping her mind on the job and her gaze on Taggart, Eve slipped into her role and became the smuggler’s prize, a bounty about to be offered up to its claimant.

Her dyed-red lips curved in an inviting smile, the smile Ankharan law forbade her from offering to anyone but her owner, and her muscles relaxed into a fluid, taunting ripple that carried her across the short distance separating her from Taggart. She saw his eyes spark just before she sank into her bow of obeisance. Sleek muscles flexed under the cover of feminine curves as she dropped to her knees and spread them wide before her master’s gaze. The soles of her feet pressed together behind her, and her back arched to keep her balance as she slowly lowered her shoulders to the floor, stretched her arms to the sides, and laid her cheek against the cool, slick marble.

Her heart beat against her chest until she wondered why the sound didn’t thud rhythmically against the floor, but she waited patiently for her new owner to acknowledge her bow. Feeling the cold surface of the marble pressing against her bare breasts, she wondered if he waited because he knew a few more seconds of the chill would draw her nipples into tight little points that would greet him when he let her rise. She would hardly put it past him.

“Impressive balance, but not quite a scale tipper.” His voice rumbled above her, and Eve felt her skin draw tight in response to the nearly tactile sensation. “What else have you got?”

The sharp clap of his hands released her, and she straightened to sit back on her heels with her lya veil pooled between her spread legs and her breasts thrust out before her. She raised her chin and met his gaze, trying very hard not to think about the vast difference in their heights or the little voice in the back of her head that kept trying to tell her that being owned by Michael Taggart might not be all that bad.

Telling the little voice to shut up and die, she gave him a small, curving smile and kept her voice at a purr as she gave a fitting response. “I have everything you require, dashim, for all that I am is yours, and all that I have I offer unto you.”

She saw his eyebrow quirk, his mouth twist at her use of his anticipated title. “I got that much, babe, but we haven’t settled on whether or not I’m really going to be your master yet, have we? I’m not sure you’re quite what I’m looking for.”

Gritting her teeth, Eve tilted her head and gazed up at him through thick, dark lashes. “I am whatever you wish me to be, dashim. Only tell me what you desire, and I will provide it.”

Taggart heaved a theatrical sigh that made Eve want to reach forward and squeeze his balls in a vise grip. Her fingers actually twitched.

“It’s a nice offer, babe, but I’m not sure that’s possible. Like I told Jaru here, I’m not sure you’re quite…built to spec.” His expression probably wanted to look regretful, but the avid enjoyment there ruined the effect. “To be blunt, honey, you just don’t have the tits.”

She couldn’t keep her eyes from narrowing at that, but she distracted Taggart by rising to her feet and cupping said endowments in her hands. Holding them aloft like a sacrifice, she took a sliding step forward until they brushed against the sinewy length of his forearms. “For you I would be perfect, dashim, but surely there is something here that would be pleasing to you.” Her lids dropped to half-mast, and her tongue darted out to moisten her red lips. “Surely if the taste and feel of your slave pleases you, you cannot send her from you?”

With the prince silent behind them and the crowd murmuring around them, Taggart looked down at the plump mounds displayed before him and uncrossed his arms. “I don’t know,” he murmured, already bending toward her, “but it can’t hurt to try.”

Smooth and sure, his mouth closed over one tight nipple and tested the strength of Eve’s training and resolve—her training not to break from her character and her resolve not to moan in pleasure. She managed both, but barely.

The man had the mouth of a sorcerer, hot and strong and absolutely magical. He sipped from the distended peak as if it were a goblet, scraped his teeth over the ruched surface as if it were an exotic sweet. The subtly menacing motion made her breath catch and her fingers tremble against her own skin, while her body heated in places she’d much rather have kept cool. They weren’t inclined to listen to reason.

“Evenaril!”

Eve jumped at the prince’s shout, but she didn’t drop her hands, and Taggart didn’t move his lips. He continued torturing the breast he held captive with flicks of his tongue and slow, deep pulls of his mouth. The only sign that he heard a thing was the muscled arm he slid around her and the firm, calloused hand that cupped her ass to hold her close against him. That hand kneaded, and Eve shuddered.

“Evenaril, you disgrace me!” the prince bellowed, inspiring a surge in the whispers of the crowd. “For a nitara of my house to play the whore for a man who is not yet even her master is an insult to my honor. Step away from him!”

If you think I can walk right now, you’re insane, you silly little man.

She opened her mouth to reply, but intelligent thought deserted her when Taggart slid another hand under the thin veil of her lya to cup her damp pussy. He scraped a nail gently against the sensitive skin there, and she locked her knees to keep them from folding.

Okay, this is all supposed to be make-believe, she reminded herself, pausing to gasp when his probing fingers slipped between her slick folds to rim her weeping entrance. It’s not real. Just make-believe.

And she kept telling herself that, even as his scalding mouth withdrew from her breast only to close again around its neglected twin. Then she just moaned.

At the sound, the whispers of the crowd turned into rumblings, and the prince shouted loudly for silence. “Leave him, Evenaril.”

Hard fingers bit deeply into the pale skin of her ass, and that mouth drew more strongly at her breast to keep her in place. As if she had any intention of moving. His wicked touches did make her struggle with control for a few extra seconds before she could maintain enough breath to speak.

“I cannot obey, my prince,” she gritted out, forcing her mind to focus on making a mental star chart of the Perth system instead of the unknown galaxies Taggart’s fingers currently charted between her thighs. “I have offered myself to this man and will serve him with all faith and humility until he releases me from my bonds. As he is the blood in my veins, I can do none other.”

Blech! Do these women actually believe this crap when they… Ah! A clever twist of his wrist sent Taggart’s fingers sliding high and hard within her until Eve could barely remember what she’d been thinking. When they…um…aw hell.

“Your offer may have been made, woman, but it has not been accepted.”

Her eyes opened on the sharp report of clapping hands. Since her own still cradled her breasts like Taggart’s midnight snack and Taggart’s hands were still—oh Powers!—doing the most wicked things to her body, Eve figured the prince must have done the clapping. She knew she’d figured right when two looming members of the prince’s guard moved toward her and the preoccupied smuggler in front of her. They got about five yards away before Eve saw Deacon step in front of them to block their path. The enormous, imposing figure kept her from seeing the reactions of the guards, but half a second later Taggart slipped a third finger into her quivering pussy and pressed his thumb high and hard against her clit. After that she couldn’t see a bloody damned thing because her eyes were closed and her head was lolling back on her shoulders.

“Guards!”

The shout brought a stir of chaos to the room and a gathering of tension for a heartbeat before Taggart pulled away from her breast, releasing her nipple with a last affectionate lick, and looked over her head at the prince.

“Relax, Jaru,” he said, one possessive hand on Eve’s ass, the other, even more possessive hand, still buried between her legs. “No need to get cranky. I’ve changed my mind. I think I’ll take this one after all. So where do I sign?”

If Eve hadn’t been undercover, and if the object of her PSF assignment hadn’t had his fingers buried hilt-deep in her cunt, she might very well have shoved those words down his throat, along with a few of his own teeth. Instead she maintained her brainless facade and tried to keep her thighs from clenching around him.

“I do not appreciate your little jokes, Captain,” Jaru hissed, eyes narrow as a viper’s. “While you are in my court, I expect you to behave according to the laws and customs of my people.” His gaze dropped to Taggart’s hand pressed high between Eve’s legs. “Do I make myself clear?”

Taggart grinned. “As day.” His fingertips gave one more torturous slide through the slick heat that surrounded them before withdrawing to pat Eve’s hip affectionately. “I say we get this show on the road.”

Eve used the break in the tension to drop her ridiculous offering posture and turn so that she could keep both Taggart and the prince in sight. At the moment she didn’t trust either of them.

The prince definitely looked the unhappier of the two. Taggart’s shit-eating grin got on her last nerve, but the prince’s stony expression bore watching. She eyed it like a barometer before a hurricane as Jaru settled back into his cushions and waved his hand to silence the continuing buzz of the crowd.

“As you say, Captain, let us begin the ceremony of acceptance.”

“With pleasure.” Taggart grinned and scooped up the small box Jaru’s guards had handed him before settling on the cushion he’d kicked aside earlier. Eyes glinting with satisfaction, he locked his gaze with Eve’s, snapped his fingers imperiously, and pointed to the floor at his feet.

Someday I will make this overgrown bully pay for this. Eve glided serenely to the place he had commanded and knelt before him. I don’t care if I have to come back from beyond the grave to do it. I’ll make him pay. For all of it.

She rested her palms on her spread knees, and her gaze stayed modestly downcast as she presented herself before her new dashim. Never mind that inside, she was calling him names a whole host of cultures considered too offensive to translate. In this case it was not the thought that counted. When he quirked one of those slashing dark brows at her, she took a deep breath and began to recite the words Jinilliana had drilled her on repeatedly since her arrival. Eve had told her about the sublims, but apparently the nitarana didn’t trust something so offworld to get the job done right and made Eve prove over and over that it had.

“I present myself before you, dashim, a humble servant of your pleasure. As unworthy as I am, I beseech your acceptance and protection of this lowly nitara. My charms are few and my needs many, but all these I would forsake for the honor of service. To be nitara without dashim is to be the heart that does not beat, for my master is the blood in my veins, the breath in my lungs, and the vigor in my limbs. He provides me with all that I need, for what he does not provide, I do not require, and I give him all that I am, for what he does not accept has no worth and is best forgotten. All that I am, I offer to you, dashim, though it be low and base before you.”

When she got the whole thing out without gagging, she gave herself a mental pat on the back and braced herself for the traditional response. Peeking up at him through the veil of her eyelashes, she saw one of the prince’s advisors standing at his shoulder to prompt his response. The delay before he spoke made her ache to squirm, but if she had been still before a Protectorate tribunal, she’d be damned if she’d squirm in front of Michael Taggart.

“A man is truly a man who has means and inclination to harbor the insignificant,” he rumbled, his voice so low and rough Eve could almost ignore his words and listen just to the sound. Almost, but not quite. “Through his generosity of house and spirit, he declares himself mighty. Through the works of his hands and his mind, he struggles to improve his line and his people. To do all these things without comfort would be to struggle like the rain against the pull of the soil, unnatural and futile, for the nitarai were created to give man solace and to comfort him in his need. As nitara was created for dashim to master, so you were created for me to own, and so I accept you now into my house, Evenaril of the Prince’s House.”

Yes! A quick thrill of satisfaction raced through Eve as Taggart said the words that bound them by Ankharan law. She might hate every damned thing about this assignment so far, but the vows they’d just taken meant she might just be able to see this farce through and accomplish the mission after all.

Go me!

She kept her triumph in a headlock and completed her part of the ceremony by bowing low before her new dashim until her forehead touched the cool marble and her back muscles threatened to give out. Protesting muscles or no, she held still until Taggart tangled his fingers in her hair and lifted her head from the floor.

“I hope you have more talents in that mouth than making pretty speeches,” he murmured, his mouth curving in a wicked smile as he traced her full lower lip with his thumb.

“We will all discover that this night.” Jaru’s voice shattered the arc of tension between them, and Taggart turned to scowl at the prince.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Jaru gazed down at them, the picture of noble innocence. “Just what I said. We will all know what talents her mouth possesses before your sealing night is finished. Since we must witness the consummation of your acceptance, I should think we will know much about both of you before dawn.”

Chapter Seven

Eve forced herself not to cheer when Taggart turned on the prince with a snarl. “You’re not witnessing a damned thing.” He pushed himself to his feet and laid a protective hand on Eve’s head.

She took several slow, deep breaths and reminded herself that attempting to bite off a finger or two was not in character. It still took a great deal of willpower to refrain.

“I accepted the nitara you offered, and she’s mine now. End of story.”

Jaru’s tone smirked. There just was no other word for it. “I am afraid Ankharan law says otherwise, Captain, and you have already agreed to be bound by Ankharan law. If you had accepted the woman without protest, that would indeed be the end of it, but once a protest was launched, you forfeited the right to a private consummation. I am afraid our laws cannot consider this ownership formalized until we have witnessed the proof of the union.”

“No one is going to watch me fuck my woman.”

“No one wishes to watch, Captain, I assure you.” The prince waved a dismissive hand and continued on, seeming oblivious to the desire to do him bodily harm that radiated off Taggart’s tense form. “You will have the privacy of our finest acceptance chamber. But there will be three witnesses listening from behind the soft wall to be sure all proceeds as it should among a newly bonded nitara and dashim. Now, would you care to feast with us first, or would you prefer to be shown directly to the acceptance chamber?”

Eve could hazard a guess at what Taggart would probably prefer to do, and it had little relation to either food or going anywhere. It had a lot of relation to fists, faces, and ruining perfectly good dental work, but assaulting a prince in his own palace never rated as a particularly smart thing to do, so he just stood there and fumed. Eve, meanwhile, busied herself plotting up ways to maim Taggart that he would never have considered using on the prince.

Who says women aren’t bloodthirsty by nature?

“If those are my choices,” Taggart finally growled, since Eve’s cover precluded her from doing so, “I vote we get this over with. Where’s this damned acceptance chamber?”

Seeming content to ignore his guest’s lack of manners, Jaru clapped his hands and summoned four guards, along with three other noblemen and Jinilliana. Eve raised her eyebrows at the overkill factor but kept silent. Again.

“My advisors will bear witness to the acceptance,” Jaru said, “and my nitarana will be present to observe that her protégé behaves as she has been trained to do. All will report their observations to the court in the morning.” He looked down at Eve and Taggart, and his mouth curved in an oily grin. “I wish you fair evening, my friends.”

Taggart didn’t bother to return the pleasantry. He just grabbed Eve by her upper arm, pulled her to her feet, and turned to his navigator and second in command. He kept his tones low so as not to be overheard, but he held Eve in such a firm, close grip, she couldn’t help but hear what he was saying.

“…not sure I like this.” The two men bent their heads close together so Taggart could speak in little more than a rumbling whisper. “Something’s up, and I don’t like up. Keep an eye out. I need you to play pretty in here during the banquet, but make sure you’re at wherever they’re taking us by 0300 standard. Got it?”

Deacon nodded, and the two men briefly clasped hands, gripping palm to palm like arm wrestlers. Their eyes met, and Eve knew information had just been exchanged that even she hadn’t heard. Before she could get too curious, Taggart broke away, nodded curtly to the prince, and marched grimly after their escort.

They traversed wide stone corridors to the acceptance chamber with Taggart silently fuming and Eve just as silently biting her tongue. It had become a reflex since she’d gotten to Ankhar, and she wondered if it would be swollen enough to choke her before this Powers-forsaken mission finally wrapped itself up.

She padded along at Taggart’s side as the guards led them from the public area of the palace and into the prince’s residence. She recognized the long, ornately decorated hallway that led to the prince’s living quarters and the harem on one end, and the chambers reserved for visiting high officials on the other. They stopped about midway down the hall, and Guard One threw open a heavy, carved door to gesture them inside.

The room was bigger than the bridge of most cargo freighters and a hell of a lot more decorative. Huge, jewel-paned windows in the walls and ceiling let in the natural blue light of the Ankharan moon, making the gilded wall murals spark and glisten. When one of the nobles escorting them flipped a switch, golden light spilled out of dozens of wall sconces, revealing the true luxury of their surroundings. Lush, richly colored carpets covered the marble floors, mirroring the colors of the elaborate weavings that covered the walls. Beautifully carved furniture offered separate dining, sitting, and sleeping areas, the last of which was dominated by a bed large enough to sleep twenty. Knowing Ankharan tradition, Eve realized sourly, it probably had.

“Nice digs,” Taggart commented, pulling Eve along behind him as he stepped into the chamber. “But all we really need is a bed. And a wall. And maybe a table, about so high.” He tapped the side of his palm against the very top of Eve’s hip, oblivious to how close he came to drawing away a stub.

The aristocrat looked equally unamused. “The prince would offer no less than the finest he has to such an honored guest. Food has already been ordered for you, and here you will have comfort and privacy.”

Taggart’s grin twisted into something slightly less good-natured. “Where I come from, we don’t call it privacy when someone’s standing right there listening.”

“As Prince Jaru explained, we will not be in the room with you.” Ignoring the aggression plain on Taggart’s face, the man, who never bothered to introduce himself, strode over to the left-hand wall of the chamber and pulled aside one of the decorative hangings. “We will be here, in the room beyond this wall. A very clever design and the use of amplite ore allow the sound from this room to be magnified as it filters into the next. We will be able to hear the sound of your voices as clearly as our own. Clever, yes?”

Inconvenient as hell, no?

“Yeah, brilliant,” Taggart growled, making his displeasure obvious.

The nobleman simply raised his eyebrows. “Come now, Captain. You did not seem to be so modest when you made use of your nitara before the entire population of the prince’s court a few minutes ago. I find it difficult to believe you are as bashful as you seem.”

“What I am is annoyed. I don’t like being ordered around, even if the order might be to do something I would do anyway. It’s part of my charm.”

Eve refrained from snorting but had to distract herself to make it work. Taking her gaze off Taggart and the prince’s henchman, she watched as house servants—the nitarai-in-training who hadn’t made the cut—carried in trays of food and drink and set them on a low table before exiting as silently as they had entered. No one but Eve paid them the slightest bit of attention.

“Yes. So I see. However, these are our customs, and I am afraid not even the prince can flout them.” The nobleman spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness and offered Taggart a serene smile. “You will have all the privacy we can afford you until morning. Nitarana Jinilliana, myself, and Counselors Hahn and Kiin will be in the witness chamber. At the second hour of the morning sun, the guards will bring you back to the prince’s chamber for the accounting.”

The man gestured to his companions, and the little group headed for the door flanked by the four guards. “We will leave you alone with your nitara now, Captain. May you have joy of her.”

“Wait a minute,” Taggart barked, halting the group before it reached the door. “I’ve got a crew waiting for me on my ship.”

“They will be made comfortable,” the man assured him. “Servants have already been dispatched with food and drink for their pleasure, and your navigator will have the honor of dining tonight with the prince before he is led to his own chamber to rest. All will be seen to, Captain. You may be assured of that.”

Backing out of the room, the nobleman pulled the doors shut behind Jinilliana, the click of the lock echoing in the cavernous room. The smuggler and his sex slave were all alone, assured of staying that way until two hours past dawn.

Half a second after that knowledge sank in, Eve turned to face her new dashim and raised her gaze to meet his. She took three steps forward and wrapped her arms around his neck in a blatantly seductive move. Then she pressed her lips against his ear. “I hope you’ve got a plan to get us out of this, Tag, because if not, I just might kill you myself.”

Chapter Eight

She spoke in a barely audible whisper and tried to ignore the shaky quality it gave to her threat. Chewing out your partner because he’d just fouled up the plan you’d concocted together less than a week ago lost some of its effectiveness when you worried about your voice traveling more than a couple of centimeters, but damn it if he didn’t deserve it.

When she’d contacted Tag from the encoded communicator in her quarters at PSF, they’d had to do some quick thinking. This assignment made it clear that her position on the Force had gone from uncertain to dangerous and she needed an immediate out. Since Mokollik had been kind enough to arrange their rendezvous, they’d decided to take advantage. The plan had been for Tag to deliver the vaccine, claim her as his prize, and get her and the rest of his crew off Ankhar. Along with their intact skin, they’d be carrying the compuchip she had loaded with a lot more information than Burton and Mokollik had ever authorized. Said plan did not include performing public sex for the delectation of a half-dozen alien perverts, and she told Taggart that in no uncertain terms, wimpy whisper or no.

In typical Taggart fashion, his answer consisted of that killer grin and a large helping of sexual harassment. Before the last word escaped her, he had her plastered against him like a suntan in July while he cut off any further speech by occupying her tongue with his. He tangled the fingers of one hand in the heavy mass of her hair and cupped the other around the firm swell of her ass, kneading restlessly for about three and a half glorious seconds. That was how long it took her to get one limb untangled enough to try kneeing him in the balls. Unfortunately the bastard still had the reflexes of a cat.

He pivoted, blocking the blow with his hip, then slid his legs between hers and pulled her hips hard against his. She saw his grin widen just before he slid his cheek past hers and pressed his mouth to her ear.

“Temper, temper,” he whispered, amusement plain in his voice. “We don’t want to make our audience suspicious, Major Cartwright.”

“Speak for yourself,” she hissed back, reaching up to try and pull him away by his hair. “Right now I’m not sure I wouldn’t cheer if they chopped off your head and used it as a football.”

He nipped the sensitive skin below her ear. “I missed you too, sweetums. Now how about you be a good nitara and kneel down for me.”

After the shit she’d been through in the past forty-eight hours, Eve wouldn’t have admitted she’d missed him if every single p-force stunner in the Protectorate army were pointed at her head. No matter how fast her heart raced at seeing him again.

“How about you kiss my ass, you son of a bitch? You almost ruined the whole damned plan with that ‘not good enough’ bullshit. What the hell were you thinking?”

“I was getting into character,” he murmured, and laved his tongue against the skin pinked by his teeth. “And trying to keep our little friend Jaru from getting suspicious. You might want to try that yourself before Happy and his voyeuristic friends come knocking to find out why they aren’t hearing anything interesting.”

“They wouldn’t be listening if you hadn’t pulled this stupid stunt in the first place. It’s kind of killing my mood here.”

“Just lie back and think of the rebellion.”

For that Eve dug her newly lethal fingernails hard into his scalp. “Very funny. But it’s your fault we’re in this mess, Mr. I Have A Foolproof Plan. So what do we do now?”

Taggart sighed, the sound a rush of breath against her ear. “I don’t suppose I could persuade you to kneel down and blow me like a good little nitara, huh?”

The blow landed silently but forcefully against his lower spine. He grunted. “Guess not.”

Taggart dropped both hands to cup her ass and lifted her higher against him until her legs wrapped easily around his waist and his erection pressed soft neoleather against her barely covered pussy. She locked her ankles together behind his back and tried to pretend the six months she’d spent back at Protectorate command hadn’t left her horny enough to sexually harass him right back.

“Plan B?” she murmured.

“Not yet.” Gripping her ass securely, he walked them toward the enormous bed until he could set her down on the heavy, wooden foot rail. It kept her at the same height but left his hands free. They immediately glided up her back in lazy strokes. “First question is, do you have the chip?”

Eve fought back a shiver at the familiar sensation of his strong, calloused fingers playing over her bare skin. “Of course I have it. I endured ten years of Protectorate bullshit before they’d give me that chip. Would I come all the way here and let anyone make me look this ridiculous if I didn’t have what I stayed all that time for?”

She felt his mouth curve against her skin. “I don’t know. I kind of like the new look. These tits of yours are pretty sexy.” His hand slid around to cup one impressive mound, and his thumb tugged gently on the ring in her nipple. Just that little pressure on her sensitivity-enhanced breasts was enough to make her moan. “And I could become real fond of the jewelry.”

“Don’t get used to them. Plan B?”

“More like Plan A and a Half.” His fingers explored the nipples he couldn’t see, smoothing and tugging the nubs kept proudly erect by the metal circlets that ran through them, while his mouth pressed close to her ear. “We’re still out of here before dawn, but we have to wait until most of the place is asleep before we’ll have a decent chance. If we made a break for it now, we’d be dead before we got out of this room.”

“So we’re waiting for Deacon at oh-three-hundred. What time is it now?”

“About 2200.”

Eve shifted her grip on his shoulders. She really wanted to convince herself that the tension and anticipation she felt all came from the adrenaline rush of a complex mission and not because she kept picturing him in the leading role of that training vid, with herself as his newly purchased toy. Unfortunately she wasn’t quite dumb enough to believe it. Every knotted muscle, every soft flutter in her cunt and hitch in her breath was because of Taggart, plain and simple. The man went to her head faster than liquor, had since the first time she’d met him, in that ridiculous debacle of an ambush on Hanta Prime. With Mokollik driving her team inexplicably head-on into the hands of the rebellion, Eve had ended up toe-to-toe with the infamous smuggler and suspected rebel sympathizer. But she’d never expected to end up lip to lip.

Not that it had happened right away. A lifetime of loyalty and service to the Protectorate couldn’t be overwritten in a single encounter, but with cracks already weakening her gung-ho armor, it didn’t take much for her to see the truth of the Protectorate’s actions through rebel eyes. When the evidence of Protectorate evil surrounded her, it got even easier. And when those rebel eyes in question belonged to Michael Taggart, her illusions hadn’t stood a chance. It had taken him almost two months of following her on every ridiculous assignment she’d pulled since Hanta, of contacting her on secure channels, of presenting evidence no one with a brain could refute before the last of those illusions had been shattered, but in the end she had realized that more good could be done in ending the Protectorate’s interstellar dictatorship than in fighting to extend it. Once she’d reached that point, landing naked under Taggart had seemed like a natural progression.

He seemed to think it would be pretty natural now too.

“What are we supposed to do until Deac gets here?” she asked, squirming a little to discourage his persistent fingers on her nipples. If she could just keep her mind on business, she might make it out of this mess with her sanity intact, not that Taggart seemed interested in helping. “I’m way too wound up to sleep. How ’bout you?”

“Sleep is definitely not on the agenda,” he murmured, nuzzling his cheek against hers until the prickle of his beard stubble rasped against her skin. “We can’t risk any slipups right now. This mission is way too important. With the information you’ve brought us on that chip, the rebellion can accomplish in a couple of months what it would take us two or three years to do otherwise. We have to do anything and everything in our power to make sure we get ourselves and that chip back to base safely. You realize that, don’t you?”

He pulled back just enough for their gazes to meet, and in spite of her cranky temper and the indignity of her current position, Eve nodded solemnly. She did know how important this was. If it weren’t for that knowledge, she never would have allowed herself to wind up in her current situation—half-naked on a foreign planet where all but three other people believed her to be the legal and sexual slave of the man in front of her.

Taggart read the truth in her eyes and nodded before tightening his arms around her again and leaning forward to whisper in her ear. “Good. Then you know we’ve got to stay in character until Deacon gets here. We have to go through with the consummation.”

Every one of Eve’s muscles drew up tight as a bowstring, and her fingers clenched hard in his hair. “What did you say?”

He sighed, the exhalation rustling the tendrils of her hair. “You know we have to, Eve. It’s not like we have a choice. If we keep talking like this, someone is going to get suspicious and come in here to see what’s going on. In fact, I’m betting they’re already wondering what’s up. We’ve been in here for a good fifteen minutes, and we haven’t exactly given them a lot to listen to.”

“So maybe I’m a quiet lay.”

His snort sounded loud, since it came from about three millimeters away from her eardrum. “You are not, and I know it. You scream and moan like a banshee. It’s sexy as hell.”

“They don’t know that.”

“No one who’s ever looked at you would think, even for a minute, that you’re a quiet lay. Baby, you’ve got ‘screamer’ written all over you.”

“You can’t tell that sort of thing just by looking at someone.”

“Can too.”

“Cannot.”

“Can too.”

“Cann— Damn it, would you cut it out? I’m serious.”

“So am I, baby.” His arms tightened around her in emphasis. “We can’t afford to take a risk. We’ve got to play this out like we’re really a visiting merchant captain and his new sex slave, and we’ve got to do it so they can hear. We don’t have a choice.”

Eve went very still and spent a tense few seconds fighting very hard not to give in to the truth of his statement. Damned logic. In the end, though, she couldn’t argue with what she knew to be true. This was her job. It might be her first job for the other side, and it might be a job she’d rather not be doing, but half a life of working undercover meant that when it came down to it, Eve would do what needed to be done.

“I hate not having a choice.” When she spoke, her voice was soft and sullen, but she took a deep breath and forced most of the tension out of her limbs. “Why couldn’t you pose as the sex slave?”

“Wrong planet.” He planted a sweet, soft kiss beneath her ear and hugged her tightly. “But I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

“This is bigger than a few stinking flowers and dinner in a fancy restaurant,” she warned him. “I expect sexual favors.”

“You got it.”

“Kinky sexual favors.”

“Anything you want, baby.” His hands stroked her back, more to soothe than to arouse. “As soon as we get home, I’ll give you all the kinky sexual favors you can handle. But right now we have a job to do. Are you with me?”

Eve dismissed her last wistful thought of immediate escape and released her grip on his hair. “Nobody else damned well better be,” she muttered. If anyone would be having sex with Taggart during this mission—or any other mission, for that matter—she’d make damned sure it was her. “Okay. I’m ready.”

“Good girl. Stay with me, okay? Remember, this is all just make-believe.”

Before she could even nod, Taggart released her and stepped back from the bed, leaving her perched on the foot rail, shivering at the loss of his heat. She watched as he folded his arms across his chest and assumed an insolent expression, but she still hadn’t expected him to slip into his character quite so fast. Or quite so comfortably.

“Come over here and get on your knees, babe,” he drawled just loud enough to be overheard, “and let’s see if that mouth of yours is half as clever as it looks.”

Chapter Nine

Kinky sexual favors and chocolate, Eve revised, sliding off the foot rail to cross the few short paces separating her from her partner. Real chocolate. Not that synthetic crap, either.

“Well?” Taggart demanded, crooking one eyebrow imperiously. “Are you going to be a good little nitara for me, or do I have to tell Jaru the deal’s off?”

No longer bothering to hush their voices, Eve knew their audience could hear what they were saying, but no one could see them. She took advantage of that by glaring at Taggart in a completely unsubmissive way before sinking gracefully to her knees before him. “I shall be whatever my master requires, dashim.”

Her narrowed eyes and sugar-sweet tone clashed a little, but Eve didn’t really care, and it just made Taggart grin.

“Good answer, babe, but why don’t you go ahead and suit actions to words?” He reached down to the front seam of his pants and pulled the fastening, spreading the leather open to reveal his erect cock. “What I require right now is for you to wrap your lips around my dick and get to work.”

If he hadn’t punctuated his ridiculously offensive words with an amused wink and an affectionate caress to her cheek, Eve would probably have wrapped her teeth around him instead. But underneath the macho bluster was the old Taggart, and she knew for a fact that the old Taggart had a cock that was truly worth sucking. Not to mention that she’d been fantasizing about doing this very thing since that damned vid. She licked her lips and wondered just how long his blowhard routine would last once she launched her own blowing routine.

Lips curving into her first genuine grin in forty-eight hours, Eve reached up to wrap her smooth, decalloused hand around his shaft and pressed the tip of her thumb firmly against the underside of the head. She heard his breath hiss in between clenched teeth, saw his eyes narrow, and decided maybe one night of playing sex slave wouldn’t be so bad after all.

“Whatever dashim wishes,” she purred just before she opened her mouth and let the moist warmth of her tongue dart out to tease the flushed tip of his erection. “I live only to please dashim.”

Taggart appeared to be too busy biting back a moan to reply.

“I thought we were supposed to make noise,” Eve whispered, taking hold of a long curl of her hair and brushing it back and forth across his straining cock.

He looked down at her mischievous expression, and his eyes narrowed. Sliding a hand around to cup the back of her neck, he corrected her. “You’re supposed to make noise. Start with humming.”

Then he drew her forward until the head of his cock knocked softly against her smiling mouth.

He tasted like musk and heat and salty sweetness, and Eve closed her eyes as she parted her lips to take him inside. The smooth texture of his skin and the thick firmness of his flesh filled her mouth, slid over her tongue, and made her moan with pleasure. When she tasted his familiar flavor, all the nonsense about master and slave faded into the background and they went back to being Taggart and Eve, partners, lovers, friends. The hand guiding her slowly back and forth along his length didn’t force or threaten. It was a warm, comforting presence and an erotic encouragement.

Beginning to hum like he’d asked, Eve savored the exotic taste of him, the feel of his broad, smooth cock filling her mouth. She took him deeper until the head brushed the back of her throat on every downstroke, and her tongue teased his tiny opening on every withdrawal. Legs braced wide, he arched his hips forward, trying to slide deeper into her moist, hot grip. His free hand brushed her hair from her face and glided over her skin to rest possessively on her pale throat. The dominant gesture should have reminded her of all the things she hated about playing the nitara, but instead it sent a shiver racing through her and pulled her nipples tight.

Just as her hand traced a slow path up his inner thigh and reached for the heavy weight between them, his fingers clenched in her hair and pulled her mouth free of his cock. It reared between them, glistening with her saliva, dark red and hard with need. “Not bad,” he growled. “The mouth works for me, but now I want to know about the pussy. Will it close around my cock half as tight as it did around my fingers?”

Eve licked her lips and hoped like hell he wasn’t expecting a coherent answer to that question, though if her cunt clenched half as tight as her thighs were currently doing, she thought she might do him an injury.

“Come here.” He pulled her to her feet and half dragged her back to the bed, this time pushing her facedown onto the mattress.

The sweet chime of her hair bells seemed odd compared to the rough action that had set them to ringing. Eve turned her head so her cheek rested on the plush covers, allowing her to breathe. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Taggart looming behind her—a dark, imposing presence having way too much fun with this whole master-and-slave thing. That really shouldn’t have surprised her. After all, Taggart naturally dominated everyone and everything in his life, so the idea that he might enjoy dominating a bed partner wasn’t all that far-fetched, but he’d never tried it with her before. Maybe because he’d sensed her natural reluctance to give up the control drilled into her by years in the PSF, or maybe because he thought she’d hate the idea.

Then again, it could just be because they’d always had so little time together in the past that they’d never progressed beyond the need to get naked and get busy as soon as humanly possible. Having to conduct a relationship in little blocks of an hour or two at a time so that no one from the Protectorate found out about them wasn’t exactly conducive to elaborate sex games. From the look she glimpsed on Taggart’s face, he appeared more than happy to change that now.

She felt him flip the rear veil of her lya up and out of the way. Then she saw him step forward and felt the smooth glide of neoleather pressing her legs apart. She spread them wide and let him move between until his hips pressed firmly against her ass and his cock rode intimately in the crevice there.

“I can see why folks around here keep you dressed in these flimsy skirt things,” he said, his voice wicked and seductive and amused. “They get my vote for the convenience factor alone.” He ran one finger along the bottom edge of the gold belt, tracing an imaginary line over the sensitive skin at the small of her back until her hips shifted restlessly beneath him. “And I’m beginning to think it’s a better idea than I’d originally guessed.”

Eve heard the hint of self-satisfaction enter his voice and stiffened, but he was fast. The bastard. Before she could even begin to guess his intentions, he grabbed both her wrists, pulled them together behind her back, and used the long, thin strip of her veil to bind them. She opened her mouth to protest and drew in a short and angry breath when she realized she couldn’t say a damned thing about it, not with the prince’s henchmen listening from the next room. Instead she had to content herself with nonverbal communication, twisting one hand into a fist and extending the middle finger high and straight above the others. Taggart laughed.

“You know, I think this look suits you, baby,” he said. “All tied up and no place to go.” His hands slid past her elbows to close around her waist, lingering to knead the soft valley there before sliding up over her rib cage and snaking forward between her and the giving mattress. Hot, strong fingers closed around her breasts and squeezed gently, tightening her nipples and her lips simultaneously. The urge to spit a volley of curses at him nearly overwhelmed her.

Taggart leaned forward, pressing against her hands and the length of her spine until his mouth found her ear and his teeth gave a quick tug to the soft lobe. His voice was low and soft, for her ears only. “You can’t even imagine how many times I’ve fantasized about having you at my mercy like this, Major. Pictured tapping in to those fantasies you lock away inside you, the ones you like to pretend don’t really exist.”

Her head snapped around, bells chiming, until she could speak without being overheard. “So now you’re a frickin’ mind reader? You’ve got no idea about my fantasies, Taggart, and don’t presume that you do.”

“I know more about you than you think, Evenaril.” He pulled back slightly, no longer making an effort to be quiet. He slid one hand away from her breast, over the curve of her ass, and down between her legs, plunging two fingers deep into the wet heat he found there. “I know you were made for pleasure, made to lie beneath me, all warm and soft and giving.” His fingers twisted, scraped, and the contractions in her pussy rippled through her body until even her teeth clenched. “I know that lying beneath me turns you on, makes you hot, makes you drip with wanting me inside you.”

He leaned forward again, this time touching his tongue to her spine above her bound hands and licking a slow, torturous trail up to the nape of her neck. There, his teeth closed around the sensitive skin until she shuddered and a tiny moan escaped her. “I know you weren’t half so hot before I tied your hands behind you. I know you’ve never been this wet…” Two probing fingers retreated, withdrawing from her pussy, making her clench and murmur a protest. Three fingers slid back, stretching, filling, making her shiver and moan in pleasure. “I know you’ve never been this hot for anyone, for anything, in your life. Have you, Evenaril?”

Eve’s head reeled, brain and muscles melting under his clever hands and wicked mouth. She’d never felt anything like this, never imagined she would want to until she got to Ankhar. Who would have thought she’d relish being dominated by a man, by any man? But this was Taggart. Taggart, who had turned her on the moment she’d seen him. The man she trusted enough to betray her government for; the man she intended to spend her life with. Maybe that was the key. Maybe she could find pleasure in surrendering not to a man, but to Taggart? Maybe her trust in him let her give in to urges she’d never known she had.

Oh Powers! Maybe I’m thinking too damned much!

The fingers buried in her cunt seemed like the center of her universe. She lived for the deep thrust and flex, the feeling of being stretched and pushed higher and higher up some slippery slope. Until she felt the hand at her breast move, felt his fingers flex, and the tip of his smallest digit hooked inside her golden piercing and tugged.

“Taggart!” she cried out, helpless. The sharp pull of sensation shot from her nipple to her clit like lightning, the sweet pleasure-pain making her writhe beneath him. Then his finger slipped out of her and she whimpered, pressing back against him, wordlessly begging for more.

He denied her, his hand settling on her bare ass in a manner that felt both soothing and threatening.

“That’s not how a nitara addresses her new master, is it, Evenaril?”

Eve pushed her hips back against him and whimpered. She heard his words through a fog, couldn’t seem to focus on them or on anything but the need to have him inside her. Her pussy felt hollow and empty without him.

“Is it, Evenaril?”

The question, spoken firmly, didn’t do much to penetrate her fog, but the sharp smack to her unsuspecting ass sure as hell did the trick. She reared up like a cobra, shocked and angry, ready to tear a chunk out of whatever body part he happened to place in her way. “What do you—”

His hand shot from her breast to her mouth before she could finish forming the words, and the action probably saved both their skins. Eve had completely forgotten about their audience in the next room in her rush to rip Taggart a new orifice.

“Is it? Evenaril.”

His emphasis on her make-believe name brought her back to reality and reminded her that while the game they were playing might be intimate as hell, it damned sure wasn’t private. She needed to remember that her cover was even more important than the feeling of being fucked by this man.

But she’d get him for that smack.

She parted her lips and ran her tongue briefly over his palm. His hand squeezed once affectionately and lifted.

“No, dashim,” she said, struggling to keep her voice meek and humble. “I apologize for my impertinence.”

“Good girl.” He returned his hands to their former occupations—one tugging and twisting at the rings decorating her supersensitive nipples, the other thrusting deep between her legs into her needy cunt. “Now tell me what you want. What do you want me to do to you, babe?”

Eve moaned, her hands twisting futilely against the fabric binding them, her hips thrusting to take him even deeper into her pussy. “I want you to take me, dashim. I need to feel you inside me.”

Taggart hummed and screwed his fingers deeper, simultaneously pulling hard at her nipple. “I’m already inside you, babe. Can’t you tell?” He curved the tips of his fingers into blunt hooks and scraped them roughly over her inner walls.

Eve threw back her head and cried out, a long, breathy moan. She wasn’t sure if the ringing in her ears came from her bells or her arousal. It took three tries before she could speak. “No, dashim. I want you to fuck me.”

A pinch tightened around her other nipple. Fingers withdrew, thrust again. “I am fucking you.”

Kinky sexual favors, chocolate, and massages. Several massages.

“Your cock,” she managed around a series of broken whimpers and gasps for air. “I want your cock to come inside me and fuck me, dashim. Take this pussy and make it yours.”

She felt him pause, felt his muscles bunch and tense against her, and almost smiled. She would have smiled if she weren’t so busy trying to keep from following up her traditional speech with something incredibly un-nitara-like. Such as, If you don’t hurry up and fuck me in the next thirty seconds, I will make you regret it until your dying day.

She shouldn’t have worried. It only took five seconds before Taggart slipped his fingers from her pussy, withdrew his hand from her breast, and closed both hands around her hips. He pulled them a few inches farther off the bed until it supported her only from her waist up. Her feet planted firmly on the floor gave her a tiny bit of leverage, and she used all of it to thrust herself back against him.

“This is my pussy,” he finally growled, shifting his hips until the hot, broad head of his cock pressed against her opening, both a threat and a temptation. “It will always be mine.”

He thrust forward on a grunt—a primitive sound to mark a primitive claiming. Eve gasped, her fists clenching and twisting in their bonds as she forced herself to relax for his blunt intrusion. His cock tunneled inside her, inch after heavy inch, forcing her passage to stretch wide in submission. She’d forgotten how big he was, forgotten the stark reality of taking him inside her body, the familiar sting when he breached the tight ring of muscle at her entrance, the breathtaking rush of sensation as he sliced deeper.

His possession gave a brutal kind of pleasure. Feeling him breach her cunt again after an absence wasn’t easy or comfortable. It didn’t feel like a key fitting in a lock, but an invasion, a conquering presence forcing her cunt to make way for him. The sensation always made her moan, always made her muscles clench and her pussy weep in helpless pleasure. Maybe that meant she really had those submissive tendencies buried somewhere inside. After all, what sort of woman gloried in a lover who caused her discomfort before giving her pleasure?

“Mine,” he grunted, thrusting his hips hard against her to seat his cock to the hilt inside her grasping pussy. He filled her to overflowing, and it was all Eve could do not to beg him to give her more. “Hot, wet, and mine.”

Powers, she hoped so!

He withdrew, making her cunt collapse behind him. Then, fingers flexing in the padding of her hips, he thrust forward again.

“Thank you, dashim,” she gasped. “Your nitara is made worthy by your attention.”

His response, an inelegant grunt, preceded a deep inhalation and gave her all the warning she got before he began to fuck her in earnest. He pounded her cunt like a battering ram, hilting over and over in her clinging flesh. The impact sent up a chorus of tiny bells that rang to mark every deep shove. His fingers bit deeply into her hips, holding her in place for his possession.

Eve thrust her hips back at him, taking everything he had to give and glorying in it. Her senses sharpened, making her acutely aware of the brush of his pubic hair against her ass, the tension in his thighs when they slammed against hers. She heard his breath rasping in his throat and the soft grunts he made with each thrust. The damned bells so close to her ears sounded like Klaxons. She felt the nubby texture of the bedclothes teasing her sensitive nipples, smelled the heavy tang of musk and sex in the air surrounding them. She heard the whimpers ripped from her throat, the harsh, uneven soughing of the breath he was stealing from her.

In all her life she’d never felt anything this intense. Whether it had to do with the situation or the modifications to her body or the presence of the man in her cunt, she couldn’t tell. Frankly it didn’t matter. All that mattered was the shimmering mirage of her orgasm she could glimpse on the horizon before her. She reached out to it, clamping her pussy tight around Taggart’s cock, egging him on with soft, breathy cries and rolling undulations of her hips.

“Please, dashim,” she gasped, her back bowing as she pressed her shoulders into the mattress, hunched her body to press harder against him. “Your nitara begs you!”

He thrust faster, harder, until the impact of his cock pounding into her helpless cunt forced her onto her toes beneath him. “Tell me!” he growled. “Tell me what you want.”

“You!” she cried, thinking frantically that if he couldn’t tell that much, he was beyond help. “I want you, dashim! Come inside me. Honor me with your seed.”

He roared, his muscles clenching hard against her. He threw his hips against her with brutal force, fucking her like an animal, primal and desperate. The impact knocked her feet out from under her, leaving her pinned between his cock and the bed, helpless and ecstatic. One final thrust butted his cock firmly against her cervix, and the shock of pain and pleasure sent her over the edge. She exploded around him, cunt spasming, body bucking as she screamed long and loud. He followed quickly, pouring his release inside her even as he continued to dig into her pussy with short, hard strokes. He thrust for endless minutes, prolonging the agonizing pleasure for them both, making the world recede and the primitive connection between cunt and cock the only thing that mattered.

She wasn’t quite sure when it ended, only that at some point his thrusts slowed to a gentle rocking that continued after he lifted them both onto the bed and curled his warm, damp body around hers like a blanket. He quickly untied her hands, and she snuggled back against him. She shifted restlessly until his hand closed around her thigh and pressed it forward, easing her part of the way onto her stomach and making more room for himself between her legs. She sighed then, feeling drowsy and content and not particularly interested in the niggling sense of unfinished business in the back of her mind. Her body felt sated and warm, and her pussy fluttered in easy little ripples around the cock still embedded inside her.

With his weight half over her, Taggart was better than a blanket, and Eve reached up to grab his arm and wrap it snugly around her. He went one better, insinuating his hand between her breasts, draping his palm over the lower one until his fingers could toy idly with her nipple ring.

“You okay?” He punctuated the question with a tender brush of his lips.

“Oh yeah.” She felt better than okay. She felt invincible, as if she could take on the entire Protectorate single-handed. In that moment, still soft and wet with Taggart’s loving, she could do anything.

“Good.” She felt the loss of his heat, then the shift of the mattress as he pushed himself to a sitting position and swung his legs to the floor. “Be a good little nitara and shake the tingles out of your arms while I go fetch that ceremonial box.”

Eve’s eyes flew open. Anything but that.

Chapter Ten

“What the hell are you talking about?” Eve hissed.

Taggart shucked his pants and looked back at her as he sat on the edge of the bed. Reaching out, he pulled her up against him and spoke into her ear. “Insurance,” he murmured. “Just in case we can’t get out of here tonight, we need to cover our bases. We need to decorate your belt and finish off your tattoo.”

Eve scowled. “Damn it, I thought we were finished with this crap.”

“Just this; then we can get a couple of hours of sleep before Deac gets here.”

Their gazes met, and she studied his serious expression for a minute before sighing and flopping back onto the bed. “Whatever you require, dashim.”

Taggart gave her an “atta girl” wink and a pat on the hip. “Stay right there,” he said at a normal volume. “If I’m going to keep you around for a while, I have to make sure everyone else knows to keep their hands off my property.”

Eve snorted in derision but entertained herself by watching the shift and play of muscle in his ass as he strode across the room. The man had a truly tasty rear. In fact, the sight of it—combined with the aftermath of truly righteous sex—left her feeling just mellow enough to play nitara for another few minutes.

“Surely no one would think to challenge a man as mighty and fearsome as you, dashim,” she said in her most innocently submissive voice. This time she had to fight the temptation not to gag, but to laugh at the way Taggart’s head whipped around in shock. “Your enemies must tremble with fear at the sound of your name.”

She saw the glint of humor enter his eyes and barely had time to wonder if she’d laid it on just a little too thick when he settled back onto the bed beside her, setting the small wooden box on the pillow near his hip.

“You know it, babe.” He leaned back against the headboard and crossed his long legs at the ankle, looking as arrogant as the prince and far more tempting. “But it never hurts to play it safe. Besides, it’s not every man in the system who can afford a genuine nitara. I want people to look at you and figure I must be even better than they thought.”

Eve rolled her eyes and pantomimed sticking her finger down her throat, but Taggart just grinned wider.

“So how ’bout you bring that sexy little skirt of yours over here and let me fix up that belt with my colors?”

“Oh, dashim, I am honored to bear your mark.” She hoped the breathy quality of her voice sounded more like reverence than sarcasm if their audience was still listening. She moved to stand beside the bed, figuring it would be easier to fit the jewels into the belt of the lya that way than if she knelt beside him on the soft mattress.

Taggart wiggled his eyebrows. “Yeah, I know you are.”

She curled her hand into an open fist and moved it back and forth a couple of times before reaching for the box. He slapped her hand away and shifted the box to his lap. Smiling, she snaked her hand between cool wood and hot skin and wrapped it around his cock, repeating her earlier motion, only this time her fist was full of hardening shaft. Taggart’s eyes went heavy-lidded, and he sent her a smoldering look as he flipped open the box to examine the contents.

“Well, well. Now isn’t this interesting.”

She eyed his wicked expression and grew instantly suspicious. Unable to demand to know what he meant, she leaned forward and peered into the box herself. It contained just what she’d expected. A set of six golden stones that looked like topaz—probably chosen as Taggart’s colors as a reference to the name of his ship, the Sovereign—a set of gold gauze veils for her lya, several bottles of ink, and the tattoo inker that would be used to complete her facial design. But none of those had put the shit-eating grin on Taggart’s face. No, his cock had hardened and his mouth had curved because of the small, unexpected object he currently rolled between his broad fingers.

A third gold ring, of the same design as the ones decorating her breasts, but smaller. She frowned.

“They’ve already taken care of your nipples,” he said, staring at her with heated intent. “So where do you think this ring goes?”

Eve felt her eyes widen and her pussy clench. She could almost have sworn she felt her clit shrink to the size of a grain of rice in terror.

No. Damned. Way. She mouthed the words at him, but since his eyes bulged at the tightening of her fingers around his cock, she figured he got the message.

She loosened her grip, and he cleared his throat. “Maybe we’ll take care of that later. How about these jewels first?”

“Whatever you wish, dashim.”

He pulled her closer by her belt, helped her straddle his lap as he kept up some idle, ridiculously arrogant chatter that Eve tuned out. She watched as he fitted the three front gems into the proper spaces on the belt. She wasn’t sure quite what held them there, but they seemed secure enough once they were in place.

Taggart sat back to survey his handiwork. “Not bad, babe. I think I like this look.”

How typically male. But if Eve was honest with herself, she’d have to admit she liked it too. It freaked her out a little, but somehow the sight of his colors adorning her belt made her happy.

Damn, I need a vacation.

“Okay, babe. Time to do the other side.” He turned her around but stopped her with a hand on her bottom and a wicked grin when she would have straddled him again with her back to him. “Uh-uh. Not that way. Just bend over my lap, babe, and point this pretty ass right up at me.”

She complied with the lift of an eyebrow. If he thought her ass was pretty, she might as well give him a good look at it. Moving with the lazy, sensual grace of a trained nitara, Eve knelt beside him on the enormous bed and slowly lowered her torso until her body draped over his lap like a blanket. She could feel the hard, hair-roughened muscles of his thighs under her belly, the hot, insistent press of his cock against her hip. Squirming unnecessarily, she shifted position until he planted one hand squarely in the center of her lower back and pressed her down.

“Right there, babe. Now be still.” She looked back over her shoulder at him, but he wasn’t looking at her. His gaze roamed over her rear end, and she canted it up to give him a better view. He used his free hand to brush her lya out of the way, then slid it very slowly over the pale, silky skin. The teasing caress made Eve tremble, and she saw her arousal mirrored in his gradual smile.

“Very nice.” He spoke in a gravelly rumble that Eve swore she could hear with her cunt. It vibrated through her, more powerful than a sex toy, and she thought about how much money he could make just recording his voice for use as an erotic enhancement. “I could get to like this view of you, babe. Though it does give me a few…ideas.”

His hand stilled on her skin, bleeding warmth into her. She remembered the abbreviated spanking he’d given her earlier and blushed to feel her pussy gush at the memory.

He laughed, dark and rich and low, as if he knew her thoughts. “But there’s time enough for that later. Right now we’ve got other things to do.”

He took his hand away, and she felt him add the remaining three jewels to the back of her belt. When he finished, he sat her up, guiding her leg back over his hip until she straddled him again, her hips settling comfortably on his thighs.

“All shall be as you wish it, dashim.” She purred the words and leaned forward to brush her lips against his before trailing them down his throat and over his chest to flick against his nipple. She felt his muscles ripple, heard the deep intake of his breath, the sighing hum of pleasure.

“Mm, look up at me, babe.”

She did so reluctantly, nibbling briefly at his nipple before sitting up straight to crawl closer to him. She eased forward until she felt his cock slide through her slick folds and nudge her entrance. Pressing herself against him from lips to groin, she rocked her hips in a primitive rhythm, caressing them both. She swept her tongue over his lips, between his teeth, tangled with his, and urged it out to play. He buried one hand in her hair to hold her to him, and in pure Taggart style he seized control of the kiss and devoured her.

Eve whimpered, opening wide to his invasion, suckling his tongue with fervent greed, needing the taste of him like water. He growled as he plundered, using his entire mouth, lips, teeth, and tongue to make her crazy. Damned if it didn’t work.

When he pulled away, she cried out and swayed toward him. Only his hand in her hair held her back, and when she reached for him, he swatted her away. “No. Keep your hands to yourself. I want you to stay absolutely still until I tell you otherwise.”

She moaned a protest but dropped her hands to her sides and gripped fistfuls of blanket to restrain herself.

“Good girl. Now don’t move.”

She didn’t move but let him move her. He released his grip on her hair and grasped her hips with both hands, lifting her a few inches off his lap and bringing her back down in a smooth, forceful motion that left her impaled on his amazing cock. “Ah!”

Taggart groaned in agreement and released his grip. “That’s it, baby. Now stay perfectly still. I need a steady hand for this.”

Eve opened her eyes on a broken gasp that ended abruptly when she saw the tattoo inker in his hand. “Wait!”

“No.” He emphasized his blunt denial with a telling glance and a subtle thrust of his hips.

“You’re mine now, Evenaril, and you’re going to wear my mark for everyone to see.”

She shivered, her internal muscles contracting around him, making them both suck in unsteady breaths. Eve let her eyes drift shut, and she trembled from head to toe. Her arms ached to wrap around him, and her pussy ached where it did. She gritted her teeth and clenched her thigh muscles to stop herself from rising along his thick shaft, riding him hard and fast toward climax. She thought it might be the hardest thing she’d ever done.

“Stay still.”

“Yes, dashim.”

She did her best to keep perfectly still when he pressed the tip of the inker lightly against the half-finished design of her nitaral tattoo, but there was no way she could ignore the feel of his cock filling her. He was too big, stretched her too deliciously. She could control the movement of her arms and legs, and the shifting of her hips, but she couldn’t keep her cunt from rippling around him. Her inner muscles clenched and released in delicate waves, suckling him like a thirsty mouth, and Eve saw the evidence of his reaction in the narrowing of his eyes and the deep rhythmic control of his breath. But his hand remained steady and the inker moved with slow, careful deliberation over her skin, leaving a tingling trail of copper-gold ink in its wake.

She was silent for a few minutes, struggling to gain control of her breathing and her desire, until the tension drove her crazy. “What is it that you mark me with, dashim?”

She couldn’t tell from the motion of his hand, but she hadn’t expected to after the experience of getting the first part done at the beginning of the assignment. The golden spiral of Prince Jaru’s house had felt more like a golden scribble when the tech inked it onto her cheek.

“You’ll see in a few minutes. Be patient.” He glared at her when she squeezed his cock deliberately. “And behave.”

Eve groaned but complied. She closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing instead of on the thick length of his cock or the painful tightening of her nipples. She breathed slowly, intently, matching her rhythm to his. If he could keep from coming while he finished her tattoo, so could she. Even if she died trying.

He worked in silence, ignoring the way she gasped and moaned whenever he shifted to ink a new spot. He seemed not to even notice their physical connection, even though he stayed more than hard enough to maintain it. When Eve began to entertain fantasies of yanking the inker out of his hand and raping him, he parted his legs, forcing hers wider in turn and bringing her down another fraction of an inch on his shaft. She felt the head knock against the back of her pussy, and the crash of sensation tore a strangled scream from her throat.

“Almost done,” he murmured, and when she heard his level voice, she debated cursing his children and his children’s children, until she realized the implications. Still, how could any man be so fucking calm while fucking?

“Please, dashim,” she whimpered, willing to play nitara if it would help. Shit, she’d be willing to play mud wrestler and street sweeper if it would get him to move. “I cannot wait any longer. I need you to fuck your pussy.”

“In a minute.”

She felt the inker lift off her face, and she popped open her eyes to see Taggart leaning back to eye his artwork critically. Her lips parted in a snarl. “Now, dashim!”

Bracing her hands on the mattress for leverage, she managed three quick, hard thrusts that brought her to the brink of orgasm before he grabbed her hips and dragged her to a stop.

“Not so fast, babe,” he growled, squeezing a warning. “Don’t you want to see my handiwork first?”

Not as much as I want to see you. Naked. Being flayed alive by little old ladies with blunt crocheting hooks.

She bit back the words. “Of course, dashim.”

He reached into the box and pulled out a mirror, holding it up until she could see her cheek reflected in the small frame. He’d drawn a heart rising from the golden spiral, a delicate thing surmounted by a sovereign’s crown. The skin still tingled where the inker had touched, but Eve thought it looked perfect. Her frustrated anger faded a little.

“It is beautiful, dashim.”

“I think it’s pretty cool.” Setting aside the mirror, he scooped up the entire box of supplies and deposited it on the table beside the bed. The movement shifted his cock inside her, pressing it against her walls until she thought she might have to threaten him with death if he didn’t let her come soon. When he sat back up to look at her, she poured every one of her emotions into her eyes—including the violent ones—and saw his eyes widen in response.

“Now that that’s done, what do you say we get back to focusing on what’s important?”

Eve shot him a killing glare. “Very wise, dashim.”

He grinned and leaned forward to lick her lips. The motion sent his cock surging deeper and her blood pressure spiking through the roof. “Thanks. Are you ready, then? Do you want to come now, baby?”

Desperate, she grabbed his face in her hands and held it steady while she tried to telegraph the dire consequences she would wreak on him if he didn’t tip her over that very moment. “Yes.”

His hands lifted up from her hips to cup her breasts, thumbs drifting over her aroused nipples, snagging the rings just enough to make her crazy but not enough to push her over the edge.

She added his children’s children’s children to her list. They’d forgive her once she explained.

“Okay then. Come for me.” He breathed the words into her ear, and without grinding, without thrusting, without moving a single other muscle in his body, he opened his mouth and stroked his tongue over the surface of her tattooed cheek and forced Eve screaming into the most intense climax of her life.

Chapter Eleven

“We got trouble.”

Not the most pleasant words in the world to wake up to, especially when they came from less than an inch in front of your face and your lover was still plastered close behind your back with his cock half buried inside you.

“What’s up?”

Apparently Taggart had gotten the same wake-up call, because he asked the question in a toneless whisper that carried no farther than it had to and betrayed not a hint of sleepiness.

Eve opened her eyes and blinked to find Eric Deacon leaning over her, so close they could have kissed. As much as she liked him, she pulled back a few inches and frowned. “Is it 0300?”

The navigator shook his head and pressed something into her palm. She looked down to see small black circles, one the size of her smallest fingertip, one about half as large. The sight clicked her directly into work mode, and she sat up, all drowsiness forgotten. She seated the speaker bud in her right ear and removed the seal from the smaller circle to expose the adhesive that glued it to the corner of her mouth. “What’s going on?”

The high-tech sound system allowed them to hear each other clearly even when they spoke in the same toneless whispers she and Taggart had used at the beginning of the night, and connected them to the communications system on Taggart’s ship. The man himself was already off the bed and pulling on his clothes.

“The excrement is hitting the air-propellant system,” Deacon said. They’d never bothered to turn the light off last night, so Eve could clearly see the expression on his face, a mix of ready tension and wry humor. “An unexpected visitor just entered Ankharan airspace and requested permission to dock.”

“Who?”

“Your buddy, General Mokollik.”

Eve swore. Just what she needed. Here she was, naked and sticky from a marathon fuckfest, and before she could sneak away like they’d planned, the creature from her worst nightmare had to show up and turn everything into a moment from the Fubar Hall of Fame.

“This is not a good sign,” Taggart said. “Only reason for him to show up here is if he planned to turn this double-cross into a triple.”

“That’s what I figured.” Deacon lifted a satchel he’d apparently brought with him and set it on the bed next to Eve. He glanced over at her and lifted one dark eyebrow but thought better of making a comment. Instead he reached into the bag and pulled out a small bundle of fabric and handed it to her. “Thought you might need this.”

“This” turned out to be a lightweight, black nightsuit, perfect for breaking and entering. Or in their case, breaking and exiting. Grateful to see real clothes again, Eve shook it out and stepped into it. She pulled the stretchy material up over her legs and hips before she frowned. The usually skintight fit drooped and bagged around her, which would be a liability if they ran into trouble and had to fight their way out.

“What’s up with this, Deac? The damned thing is at least three sizes too big.”

Deacon grinned and pulled a small arsenal out of the bag, handing Taggart a stunner, a blast launcher, and a wicked-looking knife. “Just put it on, Major, and I think you’ll understand my thinking.”

Scowling, Eve pulled the top of the suit up and shoved her arms into the sleeves. Then she reached down to close the front seam and swore. The bottom of the suit might be three sizes too big, but the top barely closed at all. Her damned artificially enhanced tits were straining the material at the seam in a way they never had before. “Shit.”

Taggart glanced up from sheathing his knife and grinned. “Looks like a good fit to me, Major.”

“You’ll both pay for this. I hope you realize.”

The bastards just grinned wider and went about their business. Deacon supplied Eve with her own stunner, as well as a compact throwing knife, which she tucked into the boots he’d also brought along. At least those were her regular size.

“The bird’s docked, and General Happy transported directly to the palace. I suggest you get your asses out of there now!”

The announcement from the ship sounding over their earbuds got all three of them into action. Shouldering his pack, Deacon gestured to the rope dangling from one of the ceiling windows. “Up, up, and away. If Mokollik is already in the palace, that gives us six and a half minutes to get gone.”

Taggart looked over at Eve. “You have the chip?” She nodded, which made him frown a little. Still he didn’t ask anything further, just headed to the rope. “Let’s move.”

They sent Eve up first, launching her from Deacon’s shoulders to give her a head start. She shimmied up the rope in a couple of seconds and pulled herself onto the palace roof with easy grace. Deacon and Taggart followed in rapid succession, moving quickly and silently onto the roof.

“It’s over a click to the docks from here,” Deacon said as they crouched in a semicircle in the moonlight. “We can’t risk bringing in a shuttle, so we’ll have to hoof it.”

“Fine,” Taggart said. “The sooner we get out of here, the happier I’ll be.”

They moved across the roof as silently as shadows, headed for the rear corner of the palace and the escape route Deacon had already mapped out. Another rope took them to the ground, and they turned toward the docks for the last leg of their escape. That’s when all hell broke loose.

Less than three meters from the palace wall, a shout ripped through the quiet night air, sounding an alarm.

“Shit.”

“Move!”

Taggart’s shout drowned out Eve’s pithy observation and sent all three of them bolting for the docks. Cries echoed behind them as lights flicked on around the palace, and guards began to pour out of the building after them. A glance over her shoulder showed Eve they all seemed to be wearing palace uniforms, and she frowned. If Mokollik was already in the palace, why weren’t his troops following them too?

She got her answer when they broke out of the wooded palace gardens and onto the stretch of road that separated them from the docking station and Taggart’s merchant cruiser. Mokollik and a small band of five PSF soldiers stood in the middle of the road, blocking their escape route. The three of them skidded to a halt, each uttering some truly creative curses.

“How nice to see you again, Major Cartwright,” Mokollik said, and even across the small distance separating them, Eve could see the foul, triumphant grin on his face. “And I see you’ve brought your friends along this time.” He nodded, taking a step forward in front of the soldiers so he could better meet her angry gaze with his soulless one. “Yes, I know all about your rebel sympathies, Major,” he said. “Though it was kind of you to provide me with the proof I needed to see you executed as a traitor.”

“You’re one to talk, you slimeball,” she shouted back, ignoring Taggart’s orders to hush. “I’m not the one who sent your own troops into an ambush just because you disliked the squad leader.”

Mokollik made a tsking sound. “I used to think you were a bright woman, Major, but I find I’m feeling quite disappointed in you right now. I didn’t want you dead because I disliked you. I wanted you dead because losing your squadron would have turned my victory on Hanta Prime into a public-relations goldmine. I would have gotten a vice-protectorship out of that if not for you.”

Eve’s jaw clenched in fury as the truth sank in. “You filthy shit,” she spat. “You’d cause the deaths of a hundred and fifty good soldiers just so you could put avenging them on your résumé?”

The general shrugged. “If you hadn’t ruined it. But it’s no matter.” His eyes narrowed even as his smile widened. “When I bring in a traitorous Protectorate officer and two wanted rebel sympathizers, I’ll get that vice-protectorship after all. All you need to do is surrender.”

Eve glanced up at Taggart and scowled. “Got any bright ideas? We sure as hell can’t go around them.”

The smile he gave her was sharp and feral and not a little bit bloodthirsty. “Then I guess we’ll just have to go through them.”

She heard Deacon sigh. “That’s your brilliant plan? Man, I need to get me a new assignment. Working for you is getting to be hazardous to my health.”

Taggart shrugged. “You got a better suggestion?”

“No, but that doesn’t make your idea any less shitty.”

Eve blew out a frustrated breath. “Boys, can we focus here, please? Our ride out of here is just about a hundred yards due west. The man I’d most like to flambé and serve to ravenous hoards of pygmy wharf rats is about thirty yards due west. We need a way out of here.”

Taggart shrugged. “So let’s make one. On three.”

“THREE!”

Deacon apparently wasn’t in the mood to waste time counting.

They launched themselves forward as one, crossing the distance between them and the troops in seconds, their stunners blazing a trail.

At first Eve tried to stay low, but her overblown endowments kept trying to topple her off balance, so she had to content herself with being really quick on her feet as she dodged stunner fire and bulldozed her way toward the ship. The idea wasn’t to defeat the soldiers so much as to get past them and onto the Sovereign in the same number of pieces as they’d had before. If the Powers were with them, they just might manage it.

Quick feet and all, she still swore like a dockhand at a backwater starstation when a particularly well-aimed blast nearly got her in the forehead. As it was, she threw herself into the dirt just in time for the edge of the pulse to singe the curls piled on top of her head and set those damned bells ringing again.

The minute I get my hands on a real blade, this stupid, idiotic, Powers-be-damned hair is history!

“Eve!”

She heard Taggart’s roar even over the blare of the stunner fire and looked up from her place in the dirt just in time to see Mokollik’s boot headed for her skull. She rolled out of the way, the instinct born of training kicking into gear as she slipped just out of range. On the way past, she thrust out her foot, catching him in the vulnerable spot behind the knee to make it buckle. It didn’t bring him down, but it made him stumble, and that gave her a precious two seconds to recover herself.

Flipping herself to her feet, Eve dodged Mokollik’s fire and ducked low, coming in under his guard. Bastard though he was, the man was a general first, and he adjusted instantly, ceasing fire and swinging down hard at the back of her head. She dodged, but the blow still caught her shoulder and sent her stumbling several feet away and cursing. Her stunner flew out of her hand and landed in the dust with a clatter.

“Shit! That is so gonna bruise.”

“Eve!”

Taggart’s second scream sounded even less happy than the first, but a quick look around assured her there weren’t any boots aimed at her skull, just a high-powered stunner aimed at her heart. She froze with one hand extended toward her stunner.

“I’m fine!” She screamed to be heard over the sounds of the raging brawl, but she didn’t take her eyes off the general. She straightened slowly. “Shut up and let me concentrate, will you?”

“I don’t think concentration is going to help you, Major.” Mokollik stepped toward her, cold eyes gleaming, and loosed his smarmy smile. “I think it would take a miracle to help you now.”

“Don’t be so damned melodramatic,” she said, wondering why the hell he hadn’t pulled the trigger already. If she were in his position, she’d be toast by now. She noted his grip on the stunner before her gaze flicked to the commotion behind him.

Mokollik seemed to be successfully blocking it out, but he probably should have been paying more attention. Taggart and Deacon were busy kicking his men’s asses. Two already sprawled across the road surface unconscious, and the other three looked in serious fear for their health.

Then Taggart brought both clenched fists down on the back of one man’s skull, and Eve made some mental revisions. Make that the other two.

“So you’re doing what?” Eve asked, shifting her attention back to the general, even as she mentally judged the distance between her and her fallen weapon. “Waiting for the miracle to happen? Or have you decided on a new career as the stereotypical villain who spills all the details of his plot, giving his enemy just enough time to get away.”

If anything, Mokollik’s smile just got wider. And colder. And creepier. “Not at all, Major. What you fail to grasp is that contrary to what you believe, I am the hero of this particular piece. Or I will be just as soon as I bring you back to the PSF for trial and execution.” He lowered his stunner and made a great show of flipping the safety as if he had nothing more to fear. “And your time has already run out.”

“Shit!”

Eve heard Taggart’s shout even as she turned her head and saw what all the cursing was about. The first group of palace guards had broken from the tree line and were charging full tilt toward the rebels.

“You see, Major, I don’t need to tell you how I will win, because I’ve already won.”

Eve saw the smug satisfaction in his lizard-pale eyes and snarled. “Not quite, you bastard.”

Without warning, she dived and rolled. Her hands grabbed for her stunner so quickly, she nearly came up shooting. Her first blast landed just where she’d aimed it—right between Mokollik’s arrogant, misogynistic legs. He fell screaming.

“Halt in the name of the prince!”

Eve glanced over her shoulder, saw the guards less than twenty feet away and closing, and re-aimed her stunner at them. “Fat chance.”

Taggart reached her side a heartbeat later and closed his hand around her arm, tugging her back toward the ship. “There are too damned many of them,” he snarled even as he squeezed off a few blasts of his own. “We’ve got to make a break for the ship!”

Eve looked at him like he was crazy. “Why don’t we just paint big fat targets on the back of our suits? Like hell!”

He ignored her protests, as did Deacon, who grabbed her other arm and began to assist in dragging her back toward the ship. “You may be a major in the PSF, Eve, but right now Tag is your commanding officer, so I suggest you listen to his commands!”

Pinned between two much stronger and equally determined men, Eve felt like screaming. Instead she swore with every foul curse she could imagine while they half carried her toward safety.

The palace guards didn’t give up. They swarmed closer, multiplying like locusts as more and more men rounded the bend in the road and headed toward them, stunners blazing a trail. Eve opened her mouth to state the obvious, namely the three of them weren’t going to make it to the ship before the guards caught them, when she saw Deacon turn his head and exchange macho looks with Taggart. She saw Tag respond with a stare and a curt nod before Deacon released his grip on her arm and pulled out a blast grenade.

She froze. “Wait a minute? What the fuck is going on? Deacon, what are you doing?”

He gave her a grin, white teeth flashing against dark skin. “Nothing I can’t handle, buttercup. Now be a good girl and go with the boss. I’ll meet you back at base later on.”

Taggart grunted and picked up his pace, dragging her more quickly toward the ship. She let him for about two seconds before she exploded. “Shit! No way! Deacon, there’s no fucking way. We are not leaving you here, no matter what alpha-male bullshit you have planned. Now get your ass over here and follow us!”

Taggart wrapped his arm around her shoulders and covered her mouth with his hand even as Deacon sent her a jaunty wave and turned to head back toward their pursuers. She kicked and struggled like a wild thing, but Taggart held fast and kept moving. While she watched helplessly, Deacon pulled the pin on the grenade and launched it over the heads of the front troops, cutting them off from quick reinforcements before he lowered his head and charged, breaking through their ranks like a linebacker.

Eve screamed, the sound muffled by Taggart’s huge palm, and he paid her enough attention to shake her into silence.

“Would you shut up and move, you little idiot?” he growled. “Deac knows what he’s doing, and he damned sure wouldn’t appreciate it if you went charging after him like an undergrown babysitter. He can take care of himself. In fact, I’ll bet you a hundred he makes it back to base no more than three hours behind us. And you know that if he’s more than four, we’ll take care of it.”

The lecture didn’t make Eve feel any better, but it did knock some sense back into her by reminding her that Deacon was a soldier and any decision he made to take a risk, he made knowing full well what the consequences would be. He wouldn’t take kindly to her trying to do something stupid like save him. Still she had to swallow past a lump in her throat before she could respond.

“You’d better be right,” she said, relaxing into his hold, “or I’m going to shove that credit chip so far up your ass, you’ll be sneezing fivers for a week.”

Taggart gave her an understanding grin. “Big words, little girl. Now move your ass.”

He stopped dragging her, and she started running. Over the din of the battle and the roar of Deacon’s battle cries, she heard a strange yet familiar voice.

“Stop them!” As clichés went, Mokollik’s was no more original than his arrogance, but he made up for it with volume. And an extraordinarily high pitch. “I want them stopped! Alive or dead, I don’t care! Just keep them off that ship!”

“Too damned late.” The growl in her ear was accompanied by the Sovereign’s hatch opening in front of them. Taggart planted a hand in the center of her back and pushed her toward it.

“Would you stop that!” she said, shrugging the touch away even as she raced up the ramp ahead of him to where engineering tech Murphy stood giving them some cover fire. “I am not some damsel in distress, you moron! I know which direction I should be running in!”

“Then move your pretty little ass in it, Major!” Taggart thundered up behind her and shouldered her out of the path of a stunner blast. “Murphy, get this damned hatch sealed!”

“What about Deacon?”

“We’re leaving the concealed pod,” Taggart ordered, shoving Eve behind him and turning to fire at the guards outside. “He’ll be two or three hours behind us. Tops. Now get it sealed!”

“I’m on it,” the tech said, already ditching his weapon in favor of the computer terminal at the side of the entry hold. “It would help if you two would stop bitching at each other long enough to get out of the damned way!”

Taggart pressed Eve back against the wall at the side of the hatch and leaned outside to squeeze off a few more rounds. “We’re clear! Close it! Shit. Wait a second.” Another blast was followed by a scream and the thud of flesh meeting ground as the soldier tumbled off the ramp and onto the soil. “Okay. Now we’re clear.”

“Got it!”

The hatch hummed as it went to work, retracting the metal ramp and sealing the entrance from any further passengers. The faint sound of curses and more stunner fire echoed against the hull of the ship, but nothing short of full cannon fire would dent the Sovereign’s armor. As soon as the last bit of moonlight was cut off, Murphy gave a loud sigh of relief. “Sealed and locked, Captain, and we’re powering up for launch. I already sent the orders to arrange for the pod. We’ll drop and anchor it out of sight. We’ll be in space in another three minutes.”

“Good,” Eve said. “In that case, you can get the hell off me, you bastard!”

She shoved hard and sent Taggart reeling backward from his crouching position to land on his ass.

“What the hell is your problem?” he demanded, glaring down at her.

“You, you arrogant son of a bitch. What the hell were you trying to pull out there?”

“Nothing! I didn’t do a Powers-damned thing. Staying behind was Deac’s idea.”

From the other side of the hold, Murphy gave a discreet cough and muttered something about seeing them later before the interior door opened and he headed into the main ship’s corridor. Eve barely noticed.

“I’m not talking about Deacon. He’s an idiot, but he’s an adult idiot and a soldier. He can make his own decisions. But you, you rebel bastard, you treated me like a kid,” she said and scrambled to her feet so she could glare down at him for once. “Like I was some sort of fluff-brained idiot who didn’t know which way to run. I’m a well-trained soldier, for Powers’ sake. I don’t need you to dictate my every move!”

“I wasn’t.” He stood as well, quickly turning the tables back on her, towering over her petite frame. “I was trying to get us the hell out of there. I’d have done the exact same thing if you’d been one of my crew. Not being confident in you had nothing to do with it.”

“Bullshit. You were acting like I really was a damned nitara, with no skills other than salaaming when you enter the room and giving blowjobs on command.”

Taggart opened his mouth, closed it again, and took a deep breath. Then his mouth curved into a grin and his gaze dropped to her breasts. “You know damned well I don’t think of you that way,” he said, all the bluster and defensiveness gone out of his voice. “In fact, this ‘rebel bastard’ has a hell of a lot of respect for you, Major. Even if you did act like a girl when Deac decided to stay behind.”

She slammed a fist into his ribs, but it lacked the bone-crunching force she would have put into it a few minutes ago. Already the ebb of adrenaline stole the heat from her anger. “I am not a girl, dumb-ass, but I am a major, and I will make you go after Deacon personally if he doesn’t report back on time.”

“No, you were a major, sweetheart, and you won’t have to make me do anything. Until the paperwork goes through, right now you’re just a civilian. If Deac gets into trouble, I’ll be the first one after him.”

She folded her arms across the breasts he still eyed and worked up a scowl. “If I’m not a major anymore, what the hell am I? The rebellion didn’t say anything about a demotion when I signed on.”

“Guess you’re just a garden-variety rebel bastard. Like me.”

“Garden variety, my ass, General Taggart.”

“What can I say? The bonus for recruiting a PSF major is pretty hefty.”

She made a face. “I bet. But I’m still waiting to see what I’ll get out of it. After all, now that I’m going to be the most wanted fugitive in Protectorate space, I ought to get something for my trouble.”

“Hey, I thought I was the most wanted fugitive.”

“You didn’t just steal the plans and operation codes for the highest security prison in the Protected worlds. Get used to being second best.”

He gave a theatrical sigh. “Damn it, now I’m going to have to seize control of a planet or something if I want to get back on top.”

“A big planet.”

“I’ll run that by Rose when we report in. She might go for the idea.”

Eve sighed and rolled her shoulders to try and relieve some of the tension. “So really, since I’m officially defecting way ahead of schedule, will the old deal stand? Rank for rank and straight into field ops?”

“I don’t see why not. Unless you wanted to go in a different career direction.” He grinned and traced his finger over the swirling design on her cheek. “After that performance yesterday, I could give you a hell of a recommendation as a sex slave.”

Eve started to launch another attack but got distracted when Taggart reached for the front seam of her suit and began to ease it open over her breasts. With the rush of adrenaline gone from her bloodstream, she managed to take a deep breath and quirk an eyebrow.

“What can I say?” She shrugged. “It’s a gift.”

“Hmmm.” Taggart’s answer was noncommittal, but his hands were certainly committed to easing the tight nightsuit from her body. “You’ve got a whole bunch of gifts. And let me go on the record right now as saying I appreciate every single one of them.”

He bent his head to her breast and closed his mouth around her pierced nipple, tangling the tip of his tongue in the ring and tugging it rhythmically as he sucked. Eve buried her hands in his hair on a moan. “Don’t get too used to these particular gifts,” she managed to gasp even as her knees turned to jelly and a hot burst of liquid dampened her cunt. “As soon as we get back to base, I’m getting my own tits back.”

Taggart released one nipple, kissing his way across her chest to the other. “Good. I like yours better.” He finished pushing her suit off, letting it puddle on the floor beneath her as he lifted her off her feet and guided her thighs to part around his hips.

“Good answer, Captain.” Eve released her grip on his hair and wrapped her legs tight about him. She slid her hands over his shoulders and chest to ease between them and pull open the front of his pants. When she curled her fingers around his erect cock, she hummed in pleasure and stroked it firmly for a few seconds before guiding the tip to her pussy and then sinking slowly onto him. “You’ve just won a prize.”

Taggart sucked hard at her nipple for a moment before pulling back to catch the ring in his teeth. He tugged sharply, sending a bolt of pleasure through her that tightened the grip of her thighs and cunt around him. “Great. I can’t wait to have my Major Cartwright back.”

Eve let her head drop back as she tensed her muscles and began to rise and fall on the hard length of his cock. She didn’t notice he was moving until she felt the cold surface of the wall at her back and the heavy weight of Taggart’s body pressing into her.

“I love you, Eve,” he whispered against her ear as he began to rock high and hard against her, driving his cock through her tender flesh with short, digging thrusts. “The real you, not some cover you wear for an assignment.”

She gasped and moaned, wrapping her arms around his neck so she could press him close and savor the feeling of her pussy clenching and releasing around him. “I love you too, Tag. Love you. Love—oh!”

The orgasm slammed into her without warning. She didn’t get a sweet, slow build, but an explosion of heat and sensation. Her pussy rippled around his cock with frantic pulses, and he groaned in her ear, pounding harder and faster into her clinging heat. Half a dozen thrusts later he tensed like a spring and shuddered, his entire body taken over by his climax, his cock jerking inside her as he spilled jet after jet of seed into her welcoming body.

He stood shivering in her arms for a few tense minutes, and Eve stroked her hands soothingly over his back, feeling the thin film of sweat that coated his muscles. He felt perfect in her arms, strong and warm and deliciously hard. She pressed a tender kiss to his shoulder, her tongue darting out to taste his musky, male flavor.

“So do you think we should get married?”

Eve jerked her head up and blinked at him. “What?”

“You know, say the whole ‘I do’ thing and live happily ever after. Should we?”

He sounded so calm and relaxed about it that Eve didn’t know what to think. She frowned. “Is that what you want?”

He grinned. “It doesn’t matter to me. I mean, I already own you, so a wedding seems kind of redundant—” She thumped her fist into his spine, and he grunted. “I plan on waking up next to you every night for the rest of my life. Marriage could work with that.”

Eve pursed her lips, fighting a smile. Not the most romantic proposal she’d ever heard, but it would do. Personally she was more interested in actions than words.

“I could be persuaded,” she said, letting the grin begin to peek out. “With the right sort of incentive.”

Taggart’s mouth made a wicked curve, and his gaze dropped to her breasts. “In that case, I’d better move fast. These things are a hell of a weapon in my arsenal. I might as well use ’em before you give ’em back.”

Eve sent him a mock glare even as she tangled one hand in his hair and used it to guide his mouth back to her sensitized nipples. “Yeah, enjoy ’em while I’ve got ’em. They’ll all be gone by this time next week.”

His tongue reached out, hooked dexterously in the loop of a nipple ring, and pulled. Eve felt the tug deep inside her pussy and moaned.

“Mmmm. I love it when you do that. Do it again. Harder.”

Taggart obeyed, moving to the other nipple, licking it affectionately, then grasping the ring in his teeth and giving it a series of short tugs. Eve’s pussy clenched around the cock that remained buried inside her. “Think you could keep the piercings? We haven’t had a lot of time with them, and they do give me ideas.”

He tugged again, and Eve whimpered, beginning a slow, rhythmic undulation of her hips.

“Maybe,” she gasped as she leaned forward to touch her lips to his. “I’ll think about it.”

Taggart grinned, capturing her mouth in a deep, hungry kiss before pulling back and nipping playfully at her lower lip. He released her hips and closed his hands over her breasts, kneading the full mounds with insistent pressure. “While you’re thinking,” he purred, “think about this.”

Then his fingers closed around the small gold rings and twisted, and Eve couldn’t think about anything at all.

Loose Id Titles by Christine Warren

The Bargaining

The Offering

Christine Warren

Christine Warren grew up in coastal New England and wrote her first work of fiction at the age of 7 while attending the second grade. Even then, her attempt at a scary story involving an intrepid heroine and a haunted house made her audience laugh out loud. She’s been mixing the amazing and the amusing ever since. The author of more than a dozen paranormal romance novels, Christine Warren has appeared on the bestseller lists of the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly. She currently lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Loose Id Titles by Christine Warren

Christine Warren