Her Cold-Blooded Mercenary

by Lea Linnett

  He smiled easily, fighting down the small spark of irritation. Even a group of sub-species rebels had rules for him to follow. Who knew?

  “I’ll stay out of trouble,” he said, earning himself a nod from the human.

  His escort—a wide-eyed cicarian with pale green skin—turned out to be disappointingly silent in response to his questions, and he soon found himself left alone and with little entertainment in a room that had obviously been intended for use as storage. Its ceiling brushed his plated head when he rose to his full height, and the cot that had been set up for him in the corner groaned under his weight.

  No matter; he wouldn’t be here on this colony for long. Mila had contracted him for a two-week period, and with the reception the other Lodestars had given him, he couldn’t see her renewing their terms at the end of it.

  He almost wished she would. Finally having some time to rest was a part of it. He’d been constantly on the move for the past six months, bouncing between whatever mercenary jobs he could find, and they were growing more and more sparse.

  His last client, Siikas—a levekk whose name had hounded him across half the Constellation—hadn’t taken kindly to him leaving his services. It was his fault that Kamanek’s reputation had been reduced to mud on every colony he turned to, disintegrating potential contracts before he could grasp them.

  But here, no one knew Kamanek. If he could convince Mila to take him on for longer, or find other work here, CL-32 wouldn’t be a terrible place to hide out.

  There were, of course, jobs out there that didn’t require a reputation—where a bad reputation might even help him secure his paycheck—but he didn’t wish to turn to those again. He’d had his fill of unsavory work with Siikas, and he’d promised himself that only the most dire of circumstances would convince him to return to it. He wasn’t there yet, thanks in no small part to this strange little colony and its even stranger rebels.

  And there was one rebel in particular that really made him ache to stay, at least for a little while. Sure, there were laws on this planet meant to keep him from touching her, but like all rules, it sounded like they were often broken. The challenge would lie in convincing her to break them, although by the way her gaze lingered, he had to hope that it wouldn’t be as difficult as her spiky exterior made it seem.

  Taz. The name suited her, buzzing beneath his skin just like the thoughts of her soft thighs wrapped around him. He wanted to know more of her—all of her. His body was already reacting, craving the intimacy he’d had to deny it more often than not in the past few months, and he palmed himself idly in the darkness of the tiny storage room.

  What would the play of her muscles beneath that soft skin feel like in the languid space between his sheets rather than in the rushed heat of a fight? How did humans show their pleasure? He’d gained an intimate knowledge of many species since he left the military, but her kind was still a mystery.

  A mystery he intended to solve, as soon as she’d allow him.

  3

  The next morning, Taz woke to her sister packing her bag on the opposite bed, a stormy expression already brewing on her face. Taz scrunched her eyes shut as she sat up, rubbing the sleep from her lashes.

  The room was quiet apart from the rustle of clothes, the noise of the warehouse around them reduced to a soft hum that Taz had long learned to ignore. They were lucky in that their room was an actual room rather than a tent out in the main complex. Taz had slept out there before, but she much preferred the comfort of a real bed over a bedroll or camp bed. She and Cara had shared this room for the last couple years, ever since Cara became important enough to start joining strategy meetings.

  Her sister glanced over. “Morning.”

  “Mornin’,” Taz replied through a yawn. “You okay?”

  Cara nodded at first, but then paused to throw an anxious look over her shoulder. “You don’t have to do this, you know. Mila won’t be able to do anything about it if you go on this supply run instead of me and I show up to take your place.”

  Taz sighed, closing her eyes briefly. “Cara, it’s fine. Like I said, I want to do this. No offense, but supply runs bore me to tears.”

  A small smile lifted her sister’s lips. “Me too, to be honest. I think Mila’s only sending Deeno and I as extra punishment for the Senekkar,” she said, pulling her brown hair up into its usual ponytail.

  Taz grimaced. Despite her protests, Cara had insisted on taking responsibility for the people they lost in the Senekkar. Taz had been terrified that Mila would simply banish them both, but their leader seemed to be a big believer in redemption. Or she was just desperate to keep a hold on the members they still had.

  “You’ll be safe, right?” her sister continued, catching her eye. “You’ll watch your back around the alien at all times.”

  “You know I will,” said Taz. She shivered slightly as she got out of bed. Although it was already spring, there was still a bite to the air in the morning, and she privately hoped it was making the levekk as uncomfortable as possible, wherever he was sleeping. She knew enough about the lizard-like aliens to know they disliked the cold. It had been disgustingly hot beneath the climate-control domes of the Senekkar while she was there, despite the rest of New Chicago being covered in snow.

  She let Cara pull her into a hug. “I need to leave. Deeno’s already waiting. I’ll hopefully only be gone a couple days.”

  Cara’s mission was to intercept a food delivery coming in at the New Chicago Space Harbor—the stratosport that connected their city to the other continents and nearby inhabited planets. The Lodestars would usually survive on donations, but those had all but dried up since the Senekkar.

  “I’ll be here,” Taz said, trying to squeeze everything she wanted to say into the tightness of their hug. Cara had been there for her longer than anyone else. When they had to go on missions apart from one another, they didn’t dare take their goodbye for granted. Nothing was certain in the lives they led.

  Cara nodded sternly at her when she pulled away, leaving soon after.

  Taz found herself alone in their shared room, and busied herself with preparations for the mission. She equipped the weapons that Mila had returned to her the night before, slipping her handgun into the holster on her hip and her knives into the various places she usually carried them: the sheath on her belt, another on her thigh, and of course the small pocket inside her boot. The weapons slid into place with a familiarity that was comforting, her body finally feeling the correct weight again. She wouldn’t need anything else for this mission. It should only take a few hours, and her job was mostly to look intimidating.

  But she puttered around a little more nonetheless, hiding her fractured nerves. She loved missions, especially when they involved her getting to use her skills in the sparring arena. It was empowering, knowing that Mila and Rekel trusted her to protect them or their cargo or whatever was being guarded, and it wasn’t like she’d just stopped training in the last few months while on probation. Training was all she’d had to keep her occupied. There was absolutely no reason for her to be nervous.

  Except there was, and he was six and a half feet of scales that she didn’t know how to deal with.

  She was embarrassed to have been beaten by him. And rather soundly, too. He’d had far too many opportunities to finish her when she was laid out on the ground. He’d even had the audacity to try and help her up. The memory made her gut twist unpleasantly.

  The worst part was how powerless she’d felt during the entire ordeal. He’d caught her up in arms that were as hard as stone, but as flexible as ivy. She couldn’t escape, and that scared her.

  But there was also that other, nameless feeling beneath the powerlessness that scared her more. It was in the shiver that ran through her when his dark eyes roved over her body, and in the electric zing that had sparked across her skin at his touch.

  She shook her head, double-checking that her favorite knife was where she’d stowed it in her boot and pushing out of the room.
>
  The levekk was nothing to worry about. He’d gotten the upper hand during their fight, but she’d learned from her mistakes. She hadn’t trained with Rekel for the better part of five years for nothing. She knew how to fight someone larger than her, and next time, the fact that he was levekk wouldn’t be enough to catch her off-guard.

  Whatever had distracted her before, she was over it now, and she’d never let him use it to his advantage again.

  ---

  “Quit staring,” Taz snapped, sending a dirty look at the levekk sitting across from her. “You never seen a human before?”

  Her heart sank as the question only widened his grin. “You know, it is kind of new for me.”

  She made a disgusted noise and curled away from him, crossing her arms and legs as if that would protect her.

  They were crammed into the back of a transport that Mila had procured, and despite her resolve to remain unruffled by the levekk, she hadn’t counted on him being quite so annoying. His appraising stare was unrelenting, and the L-shaped formation of their seats gave her little to focus on apart from him and the bland Inner District scenery passing by. It didn’t help that Rekel had raised the thick partition that separated the driver’s cabin due to their bickering, leaving Taz to fend for herself.

  All of this would be fine if the levekk’s attention didn’t make her heart thunder like it did during a fight.

  “You know,” he said, “I don’t think we ever officially introduced ourselves.” He held his hand out with the palm up in a levekk greeting. “I’m Kamanek.”

  Taz glared down at his hand, noticing he’d offered his clawless one. She wrinkled her nose and said nothing.

  But he didn’t relent. “It’s Taz, isn’t it?”

  She jerked her head in a nod, if only to get him to withdraw his hand, which he mercifully did.

  He played at being friendly, but she knew his type. He was the worst kind of levekk: a tourist. Someone from off-planet who thought humans were a spectacle for them to come and gawk at. Humans were still uncommon in the rest of the Constellation outside of the major cities’ pleasure districts, and getting to see them in their ‘natural environment’ was apparently a big draw for the kinds of trash that blew into CL-32 from elsewhere.

  There were also those who arrived seeking a more carnal exploration of CL-32’s ‘exotic’ inhabitants, and they often wouldn’t give humans much of a say in the matter. They were the type she hated the most, and from what she’d seen of Kamanek, he was a few wandering hands away from being one of them. That’s why she had to be here on this mission. She couldn’t leave whatever human he ‘bought’ at his mercy.

  Her skin prickled, yet again feeling his gaze on her like a physical touch, and she snapped her head around. “I said, stop staring.”

  “My apologies,” he said, although he didn’t sound sorry at all. He reached into the long, levekk-style jacket Mila had given him, pulling out a knife he’d concealed beneath it. He turned it over in his fingers as he asked, “Where did you learn your knifework?”

  Taz didn’t reply for a moment. Her gaze had dropped to his clawed foot, which was propped on the edge of her seat. He was wearing strange foot coverings that left his claws exposed, clinging tightly to his scaled skin and drawing attention to the hook-like shape of his calves and ankles. She’d seen it before on other species, but she had to admit, only the levekk still managed to look powerful while balancing on such graceful bone structure.

  She realized she was staring when Kamanek’s smile widened, and cursed herself for not paying more attention. “Rekel taught me,” she said. “But I’ve always used them.”

  The levekk’s brow plate shifted then, arching upwards in a way that was so close to human eyebrows that it was almost funny, albeit still kind of strange. “You learned from the pindar?” he asked. “He looks like he’d be more at home with a club.”

  “Well, he’s good,” she said acidly. “One of our best fighters. He’d have you begging for mercy within seconds.”

  “I don’t know. I’m not usually one to beg.” He leaned forward. “I might let you convince me, though.”

  A wave of heat crept up Taz’s neck at that, threatening to stain her cheeks. She looked away. “That’s disgusting.”

  “Disgusting? I think it’d be fun.”

  “I can’t think of anything less fun than being forced to fuck one of you.”

  The levekk narrowed his eyes. “Neither can I. Forcing people isn’t something I’m interested in.”

  “What about Carol?”

  “Who?”

  Taz gritted her teeth, glaring at him. “The woman you harassed yesterday.”

  He blinked at her. “You know, I’m not sure she would have called it harassment until the cicarian in the next tent started eavesdropping.”

  “Don’t you dare presume what she did or didn’t want,” Taz growled, infuriated when the levekk did little more than shrug.

  “Well, then please convey my deepest apologies to her when you see her next,” he said. “I would have told her at the time but I was a little… preoccupied.”

  Taz scoffed. “I can’t believe you’d think she’d be interested.”

  “Why? Am I that unattractive?”

  She scowled, heat creeping into her cheeks as she tried to shove down the memory of his muscled body enveloping her, and the tickle of his breath along her neck. She’d felt how sculpted his torso was as he held her against him, and there was no denying that it was… pleasant. His kind of physique would be envied even by males of her own species. But she wasn’t about to let him know that.

  “Your kind has been taking advantage of us for the past two centuries,” she spat. “Lying with you would be like betraying her own people.”

  “So, you’re telling me no human has ever been curious, then?” He leaned forward as he said it, capturing her again in his dark green gaze. Taz froze.

  She wished she could say, No. How could anyone ever be curious? But the words died on her tongue.

  She had met humans who were curious. More than curious. Half of the trouble they’d had in the Senekkar was thanks to two humans who were convinced that they’d ‘fallen in love’ with the levekk they’d been working for. They’d given themselves to their levekk owners in every way possible—willingly. It made Taz shudder.

  She couldn’t imagine it.

  She didn’t want to imagine it.

  “I certainly haven’t,” she said, and she hated how her voice wavered and her cheeks felt hot. She wasn’t curious, and she never would be. This levekk couldn’t change that with arrogance and a snake-like tongue.

  Despite the venom in her tone, Kamanek looked pleased, and she tensed up like a cat, ready for the next assault. But it never came. Instead, he glanced out the window at the Senekkar, and as the light from the climate-control domes cut between two buildings, it cast his scales in a wash of blue that was utterly striking. She tried not to notice.

  “So, how long have you been with the Lodestars?”

  She thought about simply ignoring him, but assumed it would only make him grow even more annoying. “Five years.”

  “And have you always lived in New Chicago?”

  “Yep.”

  He was silent for a moment, then: “Have you ever gone off-planet?”

  Taz whipped around, glaring at him. “How does a human like me go off-planet?”

  He shrugged. “A job?”

  She sneered at him. “No, I haven’t. There’s not much work for humans like me out there,” she said, moving her hair just enough to show her facial scars.

  “You’d be surprised. It’s not all rich levekk looking for pets up there.”

  “I’m sure,” she said with a snort. “Have you seen many humans guarding businessmen on your travels? What about human merchants?”

  Kamanek regarded her for a long moment, studying the scars on her cheek with such intensity that she covered them again, and then said, “It’s rare to see humans at all, to be honest.
Even in the pleasure districts.”

  Taz tried not to think about what that might mean. She knew humans were out there, and if they weren’t visible publicly, she shuddered to think how they might be being kept.

  “I grew up on Origin, you know,” he continued. “The levekk home planet? Not many humans there…”

  “I don’t care where you grew up.”

  “No? We’re going to be working together pretty closely. Don’t you think we should get to know each other?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, as soon as this mission is over I’ll never have to see you again,” said Taz. “So, no. I don’t want to get to know you.”

  He cocked his head at her. “Actually, Mila contracted me for two weeks. And I like it here. I was thinking of trying to convince her to keep me on a little longer.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “Come on,” he said. “Ask me anything.”

  “I don’t have any questions for you,” she snapped, turning to glare at him again. “I don’t care about you, I don’t want to know you, and I think Mila was an idiot for even letting you look at our base.”

  “Because I’m a levekk?”

  “Because you’re a mercenary,” she said, and finally he closed his mouth. “We don’t know you. You could be anyone, be working for anyone, and we have no way of telling either way. And when you leave here, who’s to say someone won’t pay you for our secrets? We’re already vulnerable enough.”

  Kamanek sighed, the amused look in his eye dimming for the first time since she’d met him. “What kind of professional would I be if I squealed on my clients? It’s hard enough to find good ones as it is, and it would only be harder if I burned all the bridges I’ve been so carefully crafting.”

  “There’s no bridge here,” she growled. “More like an exceedingly thin piece of string.”

  He snorted, the grin worming back onto his face. “Wow. You really do hate me, don’t you?”

  “I hate all of your people.”

  “They’re not my people,” he said, his voice sharpening. “I’m my own people.”