Hunters

by Michelle Marquis; Lindsey Bayer

  Before, he had been just like any other man trying to carve out a living in the harsh and desolate world of a prison planet. After, he became a short-fused, violent killer. And every bit of his bloodthirsty aggression could be traced directly back to his retraining at the Kirillian combat camp.

  There, in that dark, brutal place, death and murder became a way of life, a requirement to eat, and a means of getting whatever meager comforts there were available. Tanner was required to fight daily, sometimes several times a day, until violence was so woven into the tapestry of his being that he didn’t know how live without it. An animal side was born and nurtured, suffocating his humanity and morphing him into a beast that operated on instinct alone. It all happened so quickly he barely had time to mourn the man he had once been.

  After a couple years fighting in the cages, he was released and the real struggle began. He floundered around from planet to planet looking for a way to make a living. He picked up a few jobs that he quickly lost because of his frightening and explosive temper. Then, one late starlit night, Edna found him at a rundown space station bar.

  She was a lifeline to sanity and, after talking to him for over two hours about his ordeal on Kirillia, offered him a job as a bounty hunter. He often joked that hunting saved his life, but that statement was closer to the truth than not. But there was still one thing he needed that even he wasn’t aware of, and that was companionship. Oh sure, there were girlfriends and whores and the sex was frequent and fun, but none of them filled that gaping, empty hole inside.

  Not until he met Harmony.

  Despite his earlier feelings for her, Harmony had connected with him in a way no other woman ever had. Even though they had little in common but their jobs, he got her. Even though she was Kirillian, he was falling for everything about her—her annoying attention to detail, her constant need to explain things that didn’t need an explanation, but most of all, that she was as lost and lonely as he was.

  She was his perfect and complete opposite in every way except sex. In bed they were totally compatible, filling each other’s needs in a way Tanner never thought possible. Every time he looked at her he felt an overwhelming rush of hunger that pushed him close to madness. He wanted her like no female he’d ever met and he was determined to open her up. He knew she had feelings for him, the animal inside him could sense it, and that beast was never wrong.

  This current setback didn’t matter. All he knew, all he cared about, was that now he’d found her, he was going to keep her. It wouldn’t be easy, but he’d find a way. He had to find a way.

  Chapter Fifteen

  As Harmony struggled to understand and control the emotions bubbling within her, she thought about her parents, something she almost never did. That was all Tanner’s fault. She wished she could say they were cruel and beat her, or perhaps that they both drank and fought every night, but the truth was her childhood had been uneventful. Privileged, ordinary, expected. Those memories were like images in a stranger’s picture journal, vivid but devoid of personal involvement. Thinking back, she realized there was nothing bad or good about her upbringing. Her childhood was simply a series of experiences that felt like a distant dream, like they’d happened to someone else. It had been almost a hundred years since she’d seen or heard from either of her parents. No seasonal communications, no happy birthday transmission, no how-have-you-been, just a big, fat nothing. To be fair, she didn’t make any effort to contact them either. It was like everyone had fulfilled their expected familial obligations and went on with their lives.

  It didn’t upset her so much as just make her feel dead inside. All her childhood memories were laced with an intense loneliness. With the exception of their names, physical descriptions and professions, she knew little about her parents. Not their favorite foods, books or places to travel. Those things had not been of any importance in their parent-child relationship. They had a whole life that didn’t include her because she would have been in the way. It had been the way things were for as far back as she could remember. She was probably the unintended consequence of an unplanned sexual encounter since they had no children before and none since. In fact her entire extended family was devoid of anyone remotely close in age to her.

  Sometimes she wondered if they were still alive and if anyone would even tell her if they weren’t. A cold emptiness filled her and she shivered.

  She swiveled her chair away from the computer screen and looked at Tanner dozing on the large foldaway bunk. In a strange way, she envied him. There was no emotional black hole there—everything he felt was right there in the open for anyone to see. He was passionate, aggressive and couldn’t give a shit about where his next paycheck came from. What would it be like to live that way? Not only did he understand his chaotic emotions, he embraced them, nurtured them and allowed them to roam free through his personality.

  Her thoughts returned to her parents and a vise twisted her stomach. What the hell was wrong with her? Annoyed with herself, she pushed those thoughts down into a tiny box inside her guts. She needed a distraction and the search for Prime wasn’t working.

  Harmony got up from her chair and walked over to Tanner. His brown hair was the color of old oak and a heated masculine scent clung to his skin, mixing with an undercurrent of fresh soap. He looked dangerous and mean even in this innocent state, and she couldn’t help but smile. Her sex moistened as she remembered his wild, angry kisses. He was dressed only in black pants, unbuttoned and unzipped for his comfort. The missile head of his cock peeked out from the border of his fly.

  Harmony stood next to the bed and stripped her clothes off. The feel of the ship’s air circulating along her bare flesh was sweetly arousing and she let her hunger rise to a fierce burn. Climbing up on the bed, she pulled his pants down to mid-thigh, freeing his beautiful, sleeping cock. Taking him into her mouth, she licked and sucked it until he was thick and hard and ready. Her lust was a sexy ache in her belly and a lush new tenderness in her core. She moved her hips over his and guided his cock inside her, lowering her body down until he was buried deep.

  Three distinct and bewitching pleasures drifted through every nerve in her pussy. One was the delicious sensation of fullness, another bottomless hunger, and a third hard, pleasing friction. Harmony moved her hands over the hair on his chest and moaned. Tanner sat up, running his fingers up her throat and into her hair. His mouth savaged kisses all over her face and neck until Harmony felt the orgasm stripping away her control and breaking her down into pure animal lust. The climax seized her, possessed her, made her scream and pump her hips down on him over and over again.

  Then, as she gasped and fought to catch her breath, he claimed her, rolling over on top of her and pulling his cock out. “I don’t want to come yet.”

  He kissed her, a heartbreaking kiss that was all tender seduction. Harmony wanted to resist him, to tell him this wasn’t the way she liked to be loved, but then he was inside her again, pushing through her slick flesh, owning and devouring her as only a man could. He eased into her slowly, massaging her channel with long rotating strokes.

  The ecstasy was a mind-numbing exploration into a world of sweet torture. Every deep penetration sent her reeling with delight and wrung several intense orgasms out of her. And finally, when he couldn’t hold back his lust anymore, he pounded that thick rod into her over and over until he too found release.

  Tanner rolled off, panting. His chest rose and fell with his labored breathing. Harmony didn’t say a word; couldn’t. Her whole body was resonating and alive with the memory of so many colliding sensations.

  “That was your best yet,” she finally said with a smile.

  He looked at her and there was a demon in his eyes. Wrapping his arms around her, he said, “And I’m not even halfway done yet.”

  After another intense hour of lovemaking Harmony cuddled against him, feeling comforted and loved. “What was your childhood like?” she asked, suddenly curious.

  Tanner stared at the ceiling with his
arm around her, tracing tiny circles into her flesh. “Good, I guess.”

  “Did you get along well with your parents?”

  “Yeah. My dad and I worked on vintage motorcycles during summer vacation and my mom taught me how to cook. It was my brothers who I fought with.”

  “You know how to cook?”

  Tanner grinned. “There’s a lot of things about me you don’t know, Harmony.”

  “I guess there are.”

  “Why did you ask that stuff about my family?”

  “I don’t know. Just wondering why you’re so messed up. Go to sleep.”

  He chuckled. “Okay, honey, whatever you say.”

  Harmony let the conversation drift into silence. A moment of envy passed through her and she was startled to find she was actually jealous of Tanner. What must that have been like, to be friends with your parents? She guessed it was very nice.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Harmony nestled into the inviting warmth of Tanner’s arms, dozing peacefully. She had almost slipped into the sweet oblivion of deep slumber when a faint bleep echoed in the distance followed by several more. The next series of bleeps were slightly louder and more insistent. At first it was an annoyance, barely worth waking up for, but then her brain realized what it was and she came fully awake.

  Tanner had set the ship on autopilot and switched the cockpit lights to energy-efficient red lights. Although soothing for sleep, the effect was a little disorienting, and Harmony found it more problematic to find the terminal than she expected. While fumbling toward the console, she smashed her big toe into the base of the pilot’s seat and bit her lip to avoid crying out. Swearing softly, she settled into the copilot’s chair, glancing nervously over her shoulder to make sure she hadn’t woken Tanner. If he woke up and caught her, there would be an argument and she didn’t want him stopping her from what she had to do.

  Firing up the console, she whispered her identification code and waited while the floating icons took their positions in front of her. She opened the tracking icon and expanded its contents on the stage. A full-color 3-D image of a ship rotated slowly in front of her. Scanning the image she found an area of interest and used her fingers to manipulate the image for a close-up.

  And there he was. Prime.

  The preprogrammed tracker had picked up the hydrocore’s bio-scan on a passing trash freighter just a short distance from their current location. This was her chance to catch him and she had to take it. All she had to do was hack into the ship’s navigation system and override Tanner’s security code.

  As quietly as she could, Harmony climbed into the pilot’s chair and began decoding the database. About one full minute into the process, and only a few seconds from getting access, she accidentally input the wrong character and all the interior lights came on. As if that weren’t bad enough, a computerized woman’s voice came over the speakers, babbling about a breach of protocol. Harmony was so aggravated she had to stop herself from blasting the speakers as they repeated the same message over and over again.

  Tanner moseyed over to her dressed only in dark gray briefs. He reached across her and hit a key, silencing the alarm.

  He scratched his chest. “What’s going on?”

  Harmony tried and failed to keep the excitement out of her voice. “It’s Prime.” She clicked on the overhead screen so he could see the ship for himself. A large garbage transport vessel appeared, coasting through space, its rear thrusters flashing every fifteen seconds or so. “The tracker alerted on this ship not ten minutes ago.”

  “We don’t have time to go after Prime right now, Harmony,” Tanner said in a parental tone that completely infuriated her. “Edna was pretty clear on what our priority is, and it isn’t Prime.”

  “It may not be her priority but it’s mine. It’s irresponsible not to capture him when he’s this close. He’s a killer. Give me the code to disengage the autopilot.”

  “No.”

  “If you want to continue getting all the perks in this partnership, then you’d better give me that damn code.”

  “I’m getting tired of being threatened by you.”

  She ignored his complaint. “What is the code, Tanner?”

  “What if this diversion costs us too much time and we end up bringing Marz back late? Who’s going to explain that to Edna?”

  “We won’t be late and if we are, I’ll take full responsibility. I promise.”

  Tanner huffed out a big sigh. “The code is S-E-X.”

  She clicked her tongue. “Sex? Is that the best that you could come up with for a security code?”

  “I needed something that was easy to remember so I wouldn’t have to write it down.”

  Harmony grinned, spoke in the code and changed the ship’s heading to intercept the trash freighter. She switched the navigation map to the overhead screen and fired the engines to full speed.

  The sudden acceleration sent Tanner stumbling back into the bulkhead. He swore. “Can’t you wait until I’m strapped in before doing that?”

  They overtook the garbage ship within twenty minutes. The closer they got, the louder the tracker’s alarm became. Tanner, who’d gotten dressed in a white T-shirt, faded blue jeans and combat boots, sat in the navigation chair and silenced the alarms once again. Harmony cut their acceleration as she fell in alongside the waste vessel. Glancing down at the data flashing across the computer screen, Harmony identified the ship as the Just Returns out of some obscure dumping planet on the edge of the galaxy.

  She touched the sensor to activate the comm. channel and leaned into the microphone. “Just Returns, this is the Aries. Come in please.”

  Tanner leaned back in copilot’s seat. He put his hands behind his head and his boots up on the edge of the panel. “What are you going to do if they won’t let you board?”

  Harmony ignored him and repeated her hail. The comm. remained silent. She tried a few other languages.

  Nothing.

  Next to her, Tanner looked smug.

  “Do you think they’re intentionally ignoring me?”

  “Sometimes these trash freighters are manned strictly by droids. It may not be in their programming to respond to unscheduled hails. Don’t take it personally. I’m sure they would like you if they knew you.” He gave her a condescending pat on the shoulder.

  She went back to ignoring him and after several attempts at contact with no response, she turned to him. “Any suggestions?”

  “We could try to board them by force but that would take more time than we’ve got.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Not to mention it’s illegal.”

  “I didn’t think that mattered much to you.”

  “So that’s the best you can come up with?”

  “Short of following them all the way to their destination? Yes, that’s the best I can come up with.”

  Harmony hated to disengage, but Tanner was right. All their other options would take much too long. She had to let this go for now.

  Tanner leaned over and planted a soft kiss on her cheek. “You’ll get another chance, Harmony. He can’t run from you forever.”

  A rock settled in her stomach. All she could do was nod.

  “Can I have my chair back?”

  She surrendered the pilot chair to him as the rock grew larger in her gut. It made her nauseous. Damn that stupid assignment for Edna. She could have Prime today if it weren’t for that idiot skip Marz.

  “You okay?” he asked, putting the Aries back on course.

  Harmony chewed her thumbnail and watched the hulking trash ship slip out of view. “I’ll be even better when we catch Edna’s skip.”

  Tanner chuckled. “Me too.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Tanner hated Cyprus Four. It was a dirty, crowded mess of a world he did his best to avoid. But because of his profession, he always seemed to end up here.

  Cyprus was one of the magic three worlds in this system, a planet that not only could support life but also had a bustling economy. Unf
ortunately for the natives, that was both a blessing and a curse, because it brought both prosperity and overcrowding. Cities blended into each other, crammed to capacity with enormous two-hundred-story buildings and cramped roads and airways. Small shops, unable to contain their goods in such tiny square footage, let their merchandise and display stands clog the walkways out front. Family restaurants sat nestled above gaudy strip joints and everywhere you looked, flashing neon signs advertised everything from escorts to private religious camps.

  Because of the constant activity of ships coming and going through its dense population, the planet was a beacon for fugitives. Needless to say, the influx of fugitives only contributed to the already startling crime rate. Every hour, docking tourists, merchants and suppliers taxed the already overwhelmed immigration officials to the point where they barely screened anyone anymore. And as most skips knew, that made getting a docking permit super easy. Once the skip transported down to the planet, all they had to do was blend in with the hordes. It was a nightmare for a bounty hunter because it usually took several long weeks to flush them out. Only problem was, he and Harmony didn’t have weeks.

  Luckily, several bond agencies peppered around the planet were happy to lend a helping hand for a little cash. One of the most successful was a place called Platinum Bonds run by Buck Ransom. Buck was a six-foot blond-haired grizzly bear of a man who had been the number one hunter on the planet prior to opening his own agency. Tanner had worked with him plenty of times in the past and they’d both profited well from their partnership. But one problem nagged at Tanner as they waited for clearance to dock his ship in one of the many space ports orbiting the planet.

  Buck hated Harmony.