There were robes of lii leaf silk, light as wisps of steam on their hangers, slippers set neatly in racks. A wide rack of drawers opened to reveal little lii silk tanks and panties, nighties and underthings of what looked like cobwebs, woven of delicate colors to highlight a woman’s skin.
She stroked her fingers over a pair of shell-pink panties, grimacing when a callus snagged the delicate fabric. Spider lace—she’d seen it in the high end shops on the space port concourse, but never touched it. It felt as lovely as it looked.
Stepping back resolutely, Kiri grabbed her black tunic and tights, hanging like a dead raven amongst the jeweled colors of the other garments. She sniffed—they’d been cleaned, the fabric fresh.
She turned to leave, only to stop in her tracks as she realized her serviceable underthings were missing. Her cheeks flamed with embarrassment—her panties and light bra were made of cheap fabric that had been recycled until the fibers frayed, but they were what she could afford. And now they were gone. That space magnate had ripped her panties off and probably thrown her bra away with it.
But most importantly, he’d seen it and handled it—and everything that lay underneath it. She took a step and nearly tripped over the blanket. Or perhaps she was stumbling over the truth—that she had loved every moment of sex with Logan Stark…and she wanted more.
She dropped the blanket, but the memory of his touch remained wrapped around her.
***
Stark stood in his lav, running the shaver over his jaw. As the tiny blades hummed, he glanced from the mirror to the holovid hovering in midair to his left.
The penthouse was fitted with surveillance holocams in every room, for security purposes.
But he wasn’t above using them to assuage his curiosity about his current guest. He had half an idea that she would run without even saying goodbye. If she wanted to go, he’d see her safely back to the port. That way he’d know where to find her again.
Now he watched appreciatively as she let the coverlet fall to the carpet.
Kiri te Nawa was a beauty, all right, with her pale golden skin. Slender and well-muscled, with long legs, a tiny waist and flat belly, but she had a full, heart-shaped ass. Her breasts were small, but they were high and firm, with small, dark peach nipples. She had fine ankles, slender, high-arched feet and capable little hands. Scarred with old burn marks. Scalds from coffee, probably. He’d like to send her to a top plastic surgeon, have the damage repaired. Her golden skin should be flawless.
His appreciation changed to amusement as she poked through one of the drawers in the dressing room bureau, her expression veiled. Pretending even to herself she didn’t care about whatever was in that drawer. Her eyes brightened though, when she found something she liked.
He grinned to himself as she lifted a pair of red spider lace panties and bra from the drawer. Wasn’t a woman of his acquaintance who could resist lovely underthings. She reached in again for a pair of delicate black stockings. With them in her hand, she turned, and his gaze dropped to the feathery triangle of black curls on her mons. His groin tightened and he grimaced wryly as he switched off his shaver.
Seemed once with her had only whetted his appetite. He’d move to keep her for a time, then. She could use his help, and he was more than ready for her in his bed again.
His last lover, the ex-mistress of a business rival, had been beautiful, inventive and full of information about her former husband’s business, but they’d parted weeks ago. He’d visited an exclusive sex club once since then, but while he’d come away sated physically, he wouldn’t mind a woman with whom he could talk, as well.
Kiri walked into the lav and Stark switched off the holovid link. Seemed she wasn’t going to run, at least not quite yet, so he’d give her privacy. Little cat—a man never knew when her claws were going to come out.
One thing about her, he wouldn’t be bored.
***
Stark was waiting for Kiri when she emerged, clean and dressed. He stood on the other side of a large, open room, a mug in his hands, looking out at the dark, foggy New Seattle day through floor to ceiling windows. He was dressed now in black fitted trousers and low boots, topped with a shirt of purple so dark it was nearly black. He had a brooding look, as if his thoughts were far away. Probably plotting how to own everything he saw.
The room was furnished in the same exquisite style as the bedroom, although in dark colors from the black leather of the bold, square furniture to the pewter and grays of the cushions inviting one to sit down and watch the rain from this warm, plush haven.
“Is that dark roast I smell?” she asked, stopping in the middle of the room.
Stark turned, his gaze focused on her like a laser. Kiri realized she’d braced herself for the force of his attention. Ah, and there was that smile as he looked her over, leaning one elbow on the wide ledge of the framework that traversed the windows.
Memories swirled between them with such heat she was surprised the windows didn’t fog up. Him, surging over her in the lamplight, his cock buried to the hilt in her. Stroking her deep inside, possessing her.
She locked her knees against the urge to go to him. She’d made him smile, that was only what she did for customers. More than that was foolish. He might have given her the best sex of her life, but that didn’t mean they were true intimates.
“Dark and hot,” he agreed. “Come. I’ve real cream.”
She crossed the room to him, or to his coffee. On a table before the windows a coffee service was set out, as well as a number of covered dishes emitting intriguing scents.
Stark pulled one of the metal and leather chairs out for her. His palm brushed the small of her back as she moved past him to sit. Ignoring the thrill of pleasure rippling through her skin, Kiri sat. She picked up the graceful cerametal carafe, pouring a stream of rich, dark coffee into her heavy mug. She looked at him inquiringly and he held out his mug for a refill, looking quietly pleased.
She quelled the urge to wish she belonged here. Better to pretend she was having a dream liaison in one of those fancy hotels. Delightful, but soon over.
She accepted the small pitcher he handed her and poured some of the rich creamer into her coffee. She took a sip and sighed with pleasure. Rich and full-bodied, the coffee was delicious.
“Pangaean,” he said. “You like it?”
She nodded, taking another drink.
“Although of course you serve this at your stand, yes?”
She gave him a look. “Oh, of course I do.” A vastly inferior grade, cut with so many grava beans it bore only a faint resemblance to this rich, dark brew.
Holding the hot cup in her hands, Kiri looked out the window at her side.
“Wow. How high are we?” she asked faintly.
“Thirty stories. Like the view?”
And she’d thought her fourteenth-floor walkup was high.
“Those buildings down there look like the building blocks my brother and I used to play with.” But at least from up here one couldn’t see the dirt and squalor of much of the city.
“You’ve a brother?” he asked.
She froze, and then took another drink too quickly, scalding her mouth.
“Used to.”
“Ah. I’ve two, myself,” he said quietly.
She jerked her chin in silent acknowledgement, but didn’t look at him, hoping he’d take the hint. The pain was too big. If she let it out now, after all she’d been through, she’d never get it contained. And she had to contain it, had to hold on. Even if it was only by her claws, with the abyss yawning beneath her.
She focused fiercely on the view. A big transport barge dropped out of the clouds to hover, signal lights flashing. The control room at the top held two humans and another being with a bulbous blue head. A Lo-Aq, maybe. If so, she pitied the quarkers stuck in that cockpit with him. The barge’s hull was battered, scarred by collisions with small meteors, other craft, docks and perhaps more.
A small port authority cruiser zipped up to
hover by the barge, and the huge craft followed, dropping down into the fog.
Dizzy, Kiri jerked her gaze back to the room.
“Hungry?” Stark asked.
She surveyed the covered dishes over her coffee mug. She’d sworn she’d never want to eat again after that meal last evening, but she was hungry. When she nodded, Stark set down his mug and touched a button on the table. The cerametal covers of the dishes retracted, revealing their contents.
Kiri inhaled the rich aromas. The scones she recognized; she sometimes bought one from the bakery on the next concourse at the port. The fruit was golden ripe gremel from Pangaea. The fluffy yellow contents of the smaller dish next to it were a mystery, as were the crisp brown cylinders reposing in the third.
“Moonhen eggs and vegeprotein sausages,” Stark said. “Try some. Delicious.”
She eyed them doubtfully. “Real bird embryos?”
“Full of protein,” he coaxed, his eyes twinkling.
“All right, then.” Kiri allowed him to dish her some of the eggs and one of the sausages. She took a small bite of the eggs, chewing carefully. They were as tender as they looked and delicious, so she nodded at his look of inquiry and took a bite of the vegsausage. It was salty and crisp, and melted on her tongue. “That’s really good.” She took another bite, looking greedily at those left in the dish.
He nodded, indicating that she should take more. “I thought you’d like it.”
The gremel fruit was sweet, the scones were light and flaky, laden with plump dried berries. Kiri ate until she was full, setting down her fork with regret. “Delicious, thank you.”
Stark nodded, but his eyes sharpened over his coffee mug. “You’re welcome to stay for the midday meal.”
Her heart lifted, but only for an instant. Much as she’d love to stay in his luxurious orbit, it was not to be.
“I’ve things to do. A new place to live, and—”
He merely looked at her and she broke off with a shrug. He probably didn’t recall what it was like down here at the bottom of the food chain.
“I can’t get your credit back,” he said. “I know you don’t like what the Vulpean did, but it wasn’t illegal. But I can help you.”
Her heart gave another happy little leap. She rubbed her damp palms over her thighs. “Oh. What would that involve?”
He shrugged, as if it were as inconsequential as which flavor to have in his coffee. “We’ll decide that later.”
Later? She didn’t have until later. She only had now, and even that was debatable. Time to wake up from this pleasant little dream.
Kiri slid out of her chair, rising to look down at Stark. It should have been an advantageous position, but somehow it wasn’t. Only stubbornness held her straight and adamant, when she wanted to sink back into her chair and agree to whatever he was offering, except that she wasn’t sure it was anything but a soft nest for a few days and nights.
“Thanks, but I have a business to run. I can’t just take the day off.”
“Kiri—”
“Look, I appreciate your offer, but I’m a businesswoman, not one of your fancy whores. I can’t just lounge around here.” She waved her arm at the big room with its plush accoutrements.
His gaze iced. Kiri bit her lip, wishing she could swallow her hasty words. Quark, she’d had better manners than that since she was nine.
It was just that her lovely breakfast was knotting in her stomach with nerves as she remembered the gaping hole of her credit account and the empty coffee bins in her kiosk and her apartment and all its contents, gone.
What she really wanted to do was fling herself into his arms and weep. Not exactly a move of strength.
He held her there with just a look. “I don’t want to hear that word from your mouth again. It has nothing to do with you.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean that. Not that way, at least.”
She couldn’t very well tell him it was the thought of being only one more in a swift parade through this place—here this week, gone when another more beautiful woman caught his eye, that drove her hot words. She was different, that was all. Just a novelty for him in his shiny world.
Whereas the debacle awaiting her in hers was of such a magnitude that those sinister wings were flapping under her breastbone again.
Stark rose, setting his napkin down. Well, that was fine, glad one of them was calm.
“A pity in a way,” he said. “You’d make an alluring courtesan.”
Her face burned. Okay then. She knew what he thought of her. Still a whore, just a higher class of one.
He shook his head, a crease between his brows. “Whatever you’re thinking, no. I wasn’t offering to keep you,” he said. “Though I would be glad to do that.”
He’d be glad to keep her? She gaped at him. When his gaze fell to her mouth, she closed it with a snap. “Exactly what were you offering?”
He walked around the table toward her. “To help you. We can discuss it later. Over lunch, perhaps?”
“Um—no, I can’t. I’ve my business.”
“Dinner, then.” He pulled a comlink from his belt in one smooth motion. “Giles, Ms. te Nawa is leaving. Pick her up at the side entrance, please.
“Giles will take you to the port. He’ll also pick you up later, if you wish.”
She nodded, not sure what to say.
“You can wait there,” he indicated a passageway at the end of the large area. “He’ll be up in a few moments. I’ve business of my own to attend to.”
She waited for him to walk away, but he stopped beside her, his shoulder nearly brushing hers. He lifted his right hand and stroked his fingertips down her cheek. She stared at his collar, fighting the urge to turn her face into his warm hand.
Her gaze lifted as high as his cleft chin, then that firm mouth. It curved up slowly in a smile of pure amusement, but there was heat there too.
“I’ll see you later, little cat.”
That lifted her gaze to his. She frowned. “Why do you call me that?”
His smile deepened. “Don’t you know?” he murmured. “Because you remind me of a sleek, lovely little cat, purring one moment, then hissing and showing your claws the next. You’ve Tygean blood in you.”
“My mother,” she answered, torn between charm and irritation by his description of her.
“Ah. Perhaps sometime we’ll visit Bryght, and see what effect the mating moons have on you.”
And with this outrageous suggestion, he pinched her chin gently, turned and strode away, through a wide door that hissed open at his approach, revealing a glimpse of a series of holovid screens glowing, and then shut again.
The big room was very quiet, almost empty without his vital presence.
Kiri forced herself to turn and walk into the passageway. As she entered it, the hatch hissed shut behind her.
She looked back for a sec and then squared her shoulders and walked toward the landing pad. Would she really be back, or was this the end of a brief, strange interlude?
Everything around her seemed slightly unreal, as if she’d wake up any sec in her tiny, noisy apartment and find that it was time to rise and hurry to work, with Logan Stark not even a memory.
He wanted to see the effect of the mating moons of Bryght on her? Great God beyond, the man had no inhibitions when it came to making sexual suggestions. She blushed again, this time all over.
Full-blood Tygers, both male and female, were known throughout the galaxy to be transformed by the pull of their mating moons into sensual creatures still mostly human in form, but more big cat in nature, who for a week or longer craved sex more than food or water.
Her mother had given that up to travel to Earth II with Kiri’s father, but Kiri had read enough to know that being part-Tygean herself, the female mating moons of her mother’s home planet would have some effect on her too if she traveled there. Which she would never do. She might enjoy sex, but she had no intention of trusting her sexuality to the mercy of the lunar pull.
; Foolish enough to trust it to this man.
Chapter 7
What would it take to get her to trust him?
In his office, Stark poured coffee into the mug waiting beside a steaming carafe. Taking a drink, he turned to pace before the streamlined space with its banks of waiting holovids and input station. His little cat was going to be a handful.
He remembered the night before with a mixture of satisfaction and irritation. It wasn’t as if she was the type of woman he usually preferred. She wasn’t tall or bosomy, and her hair had been hacked by an inexpert hand.
There was just … something about the combination of feisty, independent cat and the pliant sweetness of her lithe body that drove him wild. As well as her husky voice and that laugh of hers. Even when she’d been strung tight with nerves, he’d still been able to make her laugh. What had they been speaking of? Ah, skrog, of all things. He smiled to himself, imagining her face when she first saw the creatures, as well as any number of other wonders in the galaxy. She hadn’t traveled, judging from her questions.
She’d known her share of loss, though. No people, although she’d let slip she’d had a brother. So she’d lost him as well as her parents. Now she’d lost even her dubious shelter and most of her credit.
The dazed, animal pain in her eyes after the explosion of her apartment building had hit him hard. He knew what it was to lose even one’s shelter, to be cast onto the streets of this city with nothing, with survival hinging on every move, every decision. He’d done it and she probably would too, but at what cost?
He’d slid into bed with her last night so that she wouldn’t be alone when she woke. He could have left Opal or his housekeeper, Natan, on night watch, or even set a holovid droid to hover by the bed, alert for any sign of agitation, but he’d wanted to be the one to comfort her.
No hardship there, but he hadn’t expected her to seduce him so determinedly. He would have done many things to chase the shadows from those Tyger eyes of hers, but she’d asked the very thing he wanted to do anyway. And then she’d delighted him by accepting his domination, even being comforted by it.
Stark Pleasure; the Space Magnate's Mistress (The LodeStar Series) Page 6
