Stripper: The Fringe, Book 4

by Anitra Lynn McLeod

  “Sharply shined black boots. Crossed at the ankles.” She remembered watching him perform that casual gesture. “I never looked in his boots. Did the screeners remember to check?”

  Diane returned to the bridge, biting her nails along the way. Clearly, she remembered that he’d pulled a veritable storage house out of his pockets.

  She yanked the clipboard of reports to her lap and flipped through them, looking for his possession list. Finding it, she shook her head. He’d arrived with his pockets empty. He’d told the operative he’d placed his property in an independent storage facility. Then why could she so clearly remember him unloading his pockets?

  Perhaps because she’d then turned her mind to imagining him stripping away his clothes. Emptying his pockets was foreplay. He’d done it several times when they snuck trysts while on the Damn You. Duster had removed anything sharp when they were in a hurry, but almost inevitably, he ended up removing all his clothing so there were no barriers between them. Watching him unload his pockets predictably led to him removing his clothes.

  “Wishful thinking.”

  Duster wouldn’t be taking off his clothes for her hungry gaze any time soon. If she couldn’t compel him to speak to her, it was even more unlikely he’d undress for her.

  “And he’s not here for that!” she reminded herself. “Duster isn’t here for another round of sex and intrigue.”

  But it had never been just that between them. Their brief liaison had been so much more. Her body came alive under his touch. Every muscle, every bit of skin surged forward in the hopes of luxuriating in his contact.

  His big, calloused hands always drove her to delicious madness. Fighting against her mind, which was driven only to achieve her goal, her body responded, and she constantly found herself trapped between lies and truth. A need so profound made her repeatedly lose sight of her mission as she indulged herself, over and over, in the passion he compelled with his barest touch.

  With a shake of her head, Diane stopped the lusty direction of her thoughts. In her haste, she’d forgotten to check his boots for blades, and she couldn’t do it now. All she could do was attempt to protect herself from Duster’s wrath.

  Once he sobered up, it took Duster all of five minutes to break out of the makeshift prison. When he did, he realized he was on a 3xBasic. A good-sized ship with an average crew of forty. A smart crew, he figured, because he found armed autofires around every corner. But in another way, they were not so smart, because the sensors had no protection.

  Thunk by thunk, his narrow blades shattered the electronic eyes as he worked his way to the bridge. Once there, he hacked the main controller and shut down all the defense systems. With a flick of his talented fingers, he unlocked every door on the ship.

  Right off the bridge, he found a bedroom that pressed all his hot buttons. Dim lights, multi-textured fabrics, everything feminine and soft. Colors of cream, brown sugar, peach sherbet—he took a deep breath, and his body responded with painful intensity to the lingering note of vanilla-musk.

  He methodically checked each room for occupants and weapons. When he didn’t find either, only that infuriating scent of vanilla-musk, he began to wonder if he was on a remotely controlled droid ship that only looked like a whore ship.

  Every room he entered was a bedroom more elaborate than the last. There was one of all white lace, like an easily broken flower. Another was all black leather with chrome chains and furniture that was as fascinating as it was frightening. Still another was decorated with aged rain barrels and actual bales of hay in a weird horse-stable atmosphere. Every room had only one thing in common: that increasingly annoying and arousing scent of vanilla-musk.

  Mad with desire, Duster forced his lust away with intellectual thought. Perhaps the IWOG had already taken him into custody and made this elaborate ruse to extract information by preying on his memories of Diane.

  He checked the shuttles. The port one stood empty of both occupants and weapons, but the starboard one—he heard her before he saw her. Asleep in the narrow back bunk of the tiny shuttle, the woman moaned softly.

  Peeking around the corner, Duster saw her toss and turn under the shimmering copper bedspread. The covering was clearly expensive, formed of Dardinian silk stitched with an elaborate sunburst in contrasting black shimmer thread. That blanket alone was worth a small fortune.

  Hanging back in the shadowed doorway, he peered into the tiny craft. No weapons on obvious display. The shuttle dash looked to be in sleep mode, ready to go at a moment’s notice. His fiddling with the main controls could have automatically forced the shuttle into slumbering readiness, but he didn’t feel the truth in his gut. And Duster trusted his gut.

  He backed away from the shuttle doorway.

  Ah. A pycoline. Duster couldn’t help but grin. Mary loved the stuff. And Scary Mary managed to do all kinds of creative things with the computer-enhanced fiber-optic thread. He had to give Mary some credit. Because of her, he was far more alert to potential traps. Mainly because Mary managed to turn everything into a weapon.

  Casting his gaze back to the lone occupant of the bed, he figured it must be the stripper. Or an IWOG officer. Or some very clever con artist who’d just bilked him out of 7Mil. With his money, she could obviously afford ultrafine things like that bed cover. Duster knew one thing for certain: the occupant of the narrow bunk was a woman.

  Quilted copper satin rode up her legs, smoothed around the swell of her hip, then sloped down the edge of her waist only to flare back around her rib cage to nestle the delicate length of her pale neck. Long strands of hair, cast almost black by the shadows, tangled on the pillow below her head.

  She moaned again. Not in pleasure but pain. A long and weary pain borne of great despair.

  Duster felt for her in an instant rush of compassion. She could be an innocent. A genuine stripper forced into complicity with the IWOG through no fault of her own. In the same breath came the thought she could be a swindler, or—

  She rolled over on a low groan, and his heart sped up at the prospect of seeing what she looked like, but her face remained hidden by the bedspread.

  Debating his options, considering that he could close and lock the shuttle door, return to the bridge and dump the shuttle into space without ever having to look at her and maybe do something stupid because he felt sorry for her—

  She moaned again, pushing with dream-induced panic at the shiny copper cover. Stitched silk fell away from her face.

  Conflicting thoughts immobilized Duster for almost a full minute before he dismantled the pycoline alarm.

  Duster approached the bunk, then stood, peering down as shock, confusion and anger surged through him. How could she have managed this convoluted scheme?

  More than that, why?

  What did Diane want from him?

  Had she come back to finish the job she started seven years ago? Why hadn’t she just stripped him and then started over, seducing him all over again to get what she wanted? Once she removed his memories, he wouldn’t have remembered her or her bitter betrayal. He would have fallen for her again. Even standing here now, knowing all he knew, he felt those same treacherous feelings flooding him. Love and lust and all things dark and dangerous. He knew the truth as surely as he knew he stood over her sleeping body.

  Diane.

  A woman he loved. A woman he hated.

  She was the only woman he’d ever known in the biblical sense. He’d loved her, trusted her, found himself inexplicably deserted by her. And here she lay, asleep and vulnerable, impossible in her beauty and betrayal.

  Diane moaned with a deep and terrified fear that compelled Duster’s empathy. Forcing the feeling away, he vowed not to be tricked twice.

  Vanilla-musk mixed with her scent filled the air around her. As he breathed deep, he got hard in a swift and sudden burst of desire. He literally felt the blood rush from his brain to his penis so fast he was almost dizzy.

  Anger pushed aside his longing when he realized that was exa
ctly how she’d gotten him seven years ago. He’d forced her to be his slave, and through her willing submission, she’d made him her slave. He’d mated with her in every sense of the word. He had given her everything of himself only to have her reject him in the end.

  Immobilized by conflicting thoughts and feelings, Duster decided the only way to find out what she wanted was to take her prisoner. One way or another, he’d work the truth out of her, even if it took him the next twenty years. Duster vowed to do whatever he had to do to get the truth, the whole truth, out of her luscious mouth.

  “Wake up, my princess.” He sat on the edge of her bed. The press of his weight caused her to stir.

  Her eyelids fluttered. When she realized who leaned over her, her eyes widened.

  “Duster.” She clutched at her covers, pulling them up to her chin.

  “I guess you’re finished calling me Mr. Jennings.” His hand engulfed hers.

  “I can explain.”

  “I’m not interested in your fairy tales.” When she tried to move away, Duster grabbed her other wrist with a crushing fist. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  Wide-eyed with fear, Diane shook her head and lay back in the bed. “How did you get out?”

  Releasing her, he flipped his boot blade twice, plucked it from midair and tucked it back. “You should have stripped me when you had the chance. Of both memories and clothes.”

  “I couldn’t.” She pulled the covers up with both hands.

  “Maybe I’ll avail myself of your other services.” Duster let his gaze wander over her as she trembled under the glossy copper cover.

  “My other services?” Her tawny eyes narrowed.

  He straddled her body. “This is a registered whore ship, isn’t it?” He pinned her hands to the bunk as he settled himself above her.

  “It’s a courtesan ship, but I’m not—”

  “You are now.”

  He lowered his face to hers and covered her mouth with his. Kissing her with a brutality that stunned him, he forced her to open her mouth to his penetrating tongue. Diane tasted even better than he remembered, like sweet passion candy.

  When she tried to push him away, he pressed her down into the unforgiving hardness of the shuttle bunk. Slender arms wrestled ineffectually against the thick power of his. Dominance over her fragile form excited a primal animal part of him, causing his cock to swell with need. Shocked at his actions and reactions, he pulled back.

  “Let me go.” She struggled, but not violently.

  “Seven years ago, you didn’t mind.” Duster settled himself across her hips but didn’t rest his full weight on her. As angry as he was, he didn’t actually want to hurt her. “In fact, the harder I held you, the wetter you got. How wet are you right now, my princess?”

  Diane stopped struggling, but her breath came out in panting gasps as she focused her gaze on the ceiling. “I wanted to help you.”

  “Oh, you will help me.” He kissed her again, and this time, she not only accepted, she reciprocated. His body surged with excitement. All his erotic dreams during his self-imposed celibacy caused a furious resentment to erupt. The woman he’d never forgotten fell to his mercy. As he devoured her mouth, he thought she fell not to his mercy, for he had none left for her, but to his harsh vindictiveness and the needs of his body. Finding satisfaction after seven very long years of denial would probably kill them both.

  Retreating, glaring into her eyes, he swore, “I’m going to use you in ways you never thought possible.”

  Before she could answer, he slid his body along hers, sliding her legs apart with his knee so he could settle himself between her spread thighs.

  A few layers of bedclothes prevented full contact, but the threat behind his position made it clear he would stop at nothing to have her again. He groaned with possessive pleasure when she moaned against his neck.

  “A bed is so much better than a bare floor, a bare wall. Are you bare under these bedcovers, my princess? I know you never could sleep with clothes on.”

  Duster thrust against her and almost lost his mind when she lifted her hips in return. They rocked against each other as if nothing were between them, not the cover, seven years or the bitter memory of betrayal.

  “I need more than friction.” Knowing fulfillment would come if they tore away the barriers, Duster yanked down the copper cover.

  As the edge of the blanket exposed her straining, caramel-colored nipples, Diane stopped moving and clenched her eyes tight.

  “I’ll do anything. Just don’t hurt me.”

  Her fear simultaneously aroused and terrified him. Conflicted by an urge to have her no matter what and shame for taking her against her will, Duster knew he should get up and move away, but he couldn’t.

  “Hurt you?” he whispered to her ear. He bit along her tender throat, settling on the vulnerable skin of her neck. “Are you worried I’m going to abandon you in this shuttle with only an hour of air?”

  “I never wanted to hurt you.”

  “You’ll have plenty of time for lies later.” When he bit the side of her neck, she uttered a sharp gasp and a groan of pure pleasure. “At this moment, I own you.”

  Diane arched her body up as she drew a shaky breath. “Duster, please, don’t—”

  “Mark you? But you’re mine.” He pulled back and considered her wide, tawny eyes. The innocence that compelled him seven years ago had disappeared. In its place, he found a wise, wary intelligence.

  Fury chased away her fear, causing her to struggle in earnest. “I’m not yours!”

  “Return my money, and we’ll go our separate ways.” Duster angled himself up from her body by extending his arms.

  “I don’t have it with me.”

  “Gee, that’s too bad.” He settled his body back between her spread legs. “Since you can’t return my money, you have a choice, Diane. You either strip me, or you become my willing whore.”

  Chapter Four

  Sharp, hungry desire shocked Diane. Why did the thought of becoming his willing whore excite her so profoundly? Perhaps because she intuitively knew Duster would never hurt her. With his calloused hands and his tough then tender mouth, he could drive her to delicious madness.

  In his mossy-green eyes, she saw her own desire reflected back. She didn’t even consider stripping him. Nothing could compel her to make that choice. Stripping him would literally make her crazy. Duster’s memories would merge with hers and grow, stomping about her mind like stone golems until they smashed every thought in her head. Anger, regret, passion, betrayal—giant emotional boulders crashing down. Echoes would resound ever louder in her mind until she truly went mad.

  “I can’t strip you.” Rather than look at him, she tried to find a way to get herself out of his grasp. Thinking straight when he pinned her like this was impossible.

  “Whore it is.” He rocked up between her legs.

  His weight and the press of his body felt incredibly good, but she had to resist. “I’m not a whore.”

  “So you’re a thief?” His face and the tone of his voice held only anger and contempt for her.

  “I made the contract with you in good faith.” To her own ears, her statement sounded like a pathetic excuse.

  “Good faith, much like good intentions, paves the road to hell.” When he nipped her lips, all she could think of was him doing the same motion much lower on her body. “You don’t want to strip me, fine. Then give me back my money.”

  “I don’t have it here, but I can get it.” An offer of money might be her only chance to get away from him. Giving him the money she’d amassed to break free from Network Thirteen had a rich irony that wasn’t lost on her. She’d gone against him to please them, and now she would use what she’d earned from them to break free from him.

  “I’ll just wait here.” His right eye twitched to a tight, what’s-your-deal wink. “Because, of course, I can trust you’ll return. I mean, you’d never lie to me, right, Diane?”

  Refusing to acknowle
dge his dig, she turned her attention to practical matters. “I could transfer the funds to your account.” She had nowhere near 7Mil stashed away, but she could obtain a signature-loan and max her credit accounts to get close to 3Mil. Damn. All that money would have bought her plenty of distance from the network, but that wouldn’t matter much if Duster kept her captive. It would have to do for now until she could get away from him and start over yet again.

  “I gave you 7Mil in script.”

  And now the women of Network Thirteen have it, she thought, but said, “I’m willing to pay you back in credits. Credits are worth almost twice what script is.” For now, she was leaving off discussing how much she could actually lay out in a timely fashion. If she told him the full truth, he was never going to let her go.

  “I didn’t pay you in credits. I want my money back in script. The only way to travel without leaving a trail is to use script, and you know it.”

  “You are deliberately being obstinate.” The more she kept him talking, the more the heat between them drained away, allowing her to think clearly.

  “What makes you think I have an account? I’m second to Michael ‘Overlord’ Parker. Do you honestly think there’s a bank on Windmere?”

  She hadn’t considered that. Of course there wasn’t a bank on Windmere, the only independent world in the whole Void. Banks and credits were products of the IWOG and WAG. However, to be a Fringe player, Michael must have some tap into the banking industry, which meant Duster did too. No way did they pay for everything in script, which meant Duster could take credits if he wanted to. But arguing the point with Duster was clearly a waste of time.

  “I promise, I’ll pay you back what you paid to be stripped.”

  “You got that right. If you can’t pay me in script, you’ll pay me in service.” He kissed her and thrust between her legs.

  She realized he didn’t want money nearly as much as he wanted her to be his whore. Flattered and furious, she couldn’t believe she actually wanted the same thing. But she couldn’t just think about herself.