Stripper: The Fringe, Book 4

by Anitra Lynn McLeod

  “Husband or lover? Could be a neighbor.” Duster tracked the thread of letters back and found the first one, from Sheldon, originated somewhere on Dahank. Unfortunately, he couldn’t track the sender any closer than the city of Jade, not with this lousy array. Whoever set up the link knew what the hell he was doing to keep his privacy. Sheldon had to be a computer expert. Duster could practically feel the man’s finesse.

  “Let’s find out who he is.”

  Diane struggled against her restraints until she realized that only tightened them. The more she pulled against the silk, the smaller the knots became, and the tighter the fabric constricted around her hands. All her fidgeting had done was cut off the circulation of blood to her hands and caused her burgundy robe to gape open.

  You’re just as good with knots as you are with blades.

  Giving up, Diane lay on her back and glared at her bedroom ceiling. She’d draped the utilitarian durosteel in lengths of Dardinian silk in cream, brown and salmon. At least she had something to look at while she lay utterly passive and unable to do anything but fret. She had to get away. Somehow. No matter what she had to do, she had to get home to Sheldon and Scott.

  If Duster found out about them… Diane shivered. Searching frantically in her mind, trying to remember all the email, she didn’t think there was anything there that mentioned their relationship. She’d always taken great care about that because she didn’t want anyone to know, especially not the women of her network.

  Long ago, it seemed a smart move to align herself with Network Thirteen, but as time went on, as the restrictions on her freedom became ever more apparent, Diane wished she’d never heard of them, let alone joined them. For seven years, she’d danced a fine line with the truth. Deep down in her heart, she knew everything was going to come to the surface regardless of all her plans. She dreaded that moment. Sadly, she didn’t see any way to stop it.

  My life, as I know it, is over.

  Diane sighed and closed her eyes, waiting for Duster. Sweet, compelling and dangerous Duster Jennings. What did he really want?

  As if she’d summoned him, he appeared in the doorway and said, “Sheldon just sent you another email. Seems there’s a problem back on Dahank.”

  “What?” In a panic, Diane tried to sit up, yanking the silk across her wrists so firmly her hands turned white.

  Duster noticed and grimaced. “Hold still.” He tried to untie the belt. “You shouldn’t have been in here struggling.”

  “I should have just placidly waited for you to come back and hurt me?”

  After flicking his blade from his boot with an expert hand, he sliced through the silk as if the fabric were nothing but air. Once her hands were free, he plunked the knife back, then rubbed her hands briskly in his to bring color back to them.

  “I won’t hurt you if you do what I say.” His calloused hands were almost hot against her deadened flesh.

  “You don’t want to play hero? Well, I don’t want to play victim. By the same measure, I’m also not real interested in playing whore.” She knew it was foolish to defy him, but she refused to simply give in to his demands. There had to be a way for her to get out of this mess.

  “You don’t have much of a choice, my princess.”

  “Will you stop calling me that?” Diane yanked her hands from his, angry at herself for enjoying his touch. Ribbons of her silk belt fluttered on her wrists like decorative bracelets.

  “No.” He glared at her. “Now, let’s move on, my princess.”

  She realized telling him she despised the nickname practically ensured that was all he would call her.

  “Tell me about Sheldon.”

  Diane swallowed hard. As much as she wanted to know what was in that email, she realized Duster could be on a fishing expedition. Just as she had been while mentioning Michael and that woman he kept talking about, that mysterious and ever more interesting woman named Mary. Unless Diane said the wrong thing, Duster had no idea who Sheldon was.

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “We are not going to play this game.” Duster pinned her to the bed, then climbed on top of her, sliding his body against hers, pushing her legs apart so he could settle himself with a barely checked sigh between them. Without the tie around her waist, her robe gapped open, exposing her naked body. “You best start singing like a bird, or I’m going to make you scream like a banshee.”

  Peering up at him as he held her to her bed with the weight of his body, Diane rocked her hips and whispered, “Make me scream in pleasure or pain?” His uplifted eyebrows compelled her to add, “You always warned me to be quiet on the Damn You because you didn’t want Michael to know what we were doing in the dark. Guess that’s all changed now.”

  When Duster thrust hard between her legs, the canvas-covered zipper of his trousers made a quick swipe against her tender clit. Involuntarily, she groaned.

  “Like that, do you?” Duster lowered his mouth to her neck as he rocked again. “You still turn on so easily. Even hating me as much as you do, you still want me. Admit it.”

  “Look who’s talking.” She angled back just enough to look at him. “A man who despises me but takes every opportunity he can to force himself between my legs.”

  Smiling down into her face, looking right into her eyes with that intense, mossy-green stare, Duster whispered, “I don’t hear you complaining.”

  “Because I don’t think it would do any good.” That was partially true, but moreover, she wasn’t raising a fuss because she liked him right where he was.

  “I’m thinking it’s because you got me right where you want me.” As he thrust slowly, he gauged her reaction. He smiled when he saw her obvious pleasure reflected in her face. “I’m exactly where you want me.”

  In a shadowed part of her heart, Diane admitted the truth to that but wouldn’t admit it to him. “Where I want you? I’d prefer you outside my ship. Without a suit.”

  He kept moving seductively between her legs. “My ship.” Chuckling against her ear, Duster lowered his hands to lift her legs around his hips.

  For a brief moment, she felt his entire weight against her, crushing her. Instead of protesting, she groaned. Duster felt nasty good. His hard body so fully meshed against her soft body was intoxicating. Easily, he molded her to entwine him, and willingly, instinctively, she embraced his body with hers by wrapping her legs around his hips and her arms around his shoulders.

  “Ah, no.” He pulled her hands off him and pinned them to the bed. “I don’t trust you that much.” Satisfied, he lowered his face to the hollow between her head and shoulder. Once settled, he started rocking again.

  An inadvertent moan escaped her because his fly pressed right against her clit. Each movement of his hips dragged the rough-textured fabric across her far too sensitive nerves.

  He lifted his head and demanded, “Like that, do you?”

  Diane almost howled at how good his possession felt, but said, “No.”

  “Liar.”

  Before she could protest, he rammed his hips up once, good and hard. Behind that move lay both a dark promise and a determined threat. Her entire body lifted into him, as if she could merge with him beyond the physical.

  Duster brought his lips to her ear. “You just can’t stand to tell the truth, can you? Do you ever tell the truth about anything? Or has lying become so common to you that the truth is as elusive as grace?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer this time. He kissed her hard, his tongue passionate and possessive. Diane responded in kind, loving the taste of him, the determined power of him, the way that even with her held so fully captive to his wicked needs, he was careful not to hurt her by taking most of his weight onto his elbows and knees.

  “You’d love it if I lowered my hand to open my zipper, like this—” Duster slipped his hand between their bodies and fumbled at his fly, deliberately bumping his knuckles against her painfully sensitive clit.

  Breathless, Diane waited. She wanted him to. She even angled h
er body to make it easier for him to unzip his pants and put an end to this burning torment. Seven years of dreaming about him was now a reality. Whatever consequence came of joining with him, she’d gladly pay. Later. Much later. After orgasms rendered her too numb to care.

  Chapter Six

  Balancing himself on one arm, Duster scrabbled at his fly, furious that his fingers couldn’t seem to tug down the tab of his zipper more than a few inches. Diane’s hot, slick sex brushed the back of his hand. She felt so good he almost came. There was no question if she wanted him or not. No woman could fake that. Both of them were two strokes from an epic end to the madness that had plagued them since they’d seen one another again. Nothing would stop—

  A grating metallic grinding ran along the side of the ship.

  Duster shot to his feet. “What the hell was that?”

  An alarm blared with warbling insistence.

  “Airlock.” Diane climbed out of bed, her gaping robe forgotten in the intensity of the moment.

  “Stay here. Keep the door closed.” With a wince, he zipped his pants up over his fully erect penis.

  “No! We’ve got to get the weapons out of—”

  Den of Iniquity lurched suddenly, knocking them both to the floor.

  “Thank God for thick carpet.” Duster rocketed to his feet. “Where are the weapons?”

  “Aft storage locker.”

  “We don’t have time. They’re going to board any moment. Do as I say and stay here.” Duster strode to her bedroom door, exited, then closed it behind him without looking back.

  Great, he finally found something that would take his erection down. Unfortunately, it was a life-or-death situation.

  He quickly shut off as many lights as he could get to. Darkness gave him an advantage since he knew the layout of the ship. Scanning the interior three times for trackers gave him a perfect mental image of where everything was. Interlopers wouldn’t know the arrangement of rooms, hallways or furniture. If they didn’t have lights, they would stumble around in the dark.

  A deafening crack came from the airlock off the central room when they forced it open. Duster pulled all four blades from his boots and placed them at the ready in his back pockets. Three to draw right, one to draw left.

  Favoring his draw right, he crouched along the floor, then crab-walked behind the furniture as he made his way to the main hallway that led to the bridge. Once in the hallway, he shut down the rest of the lights. Come hell or high water, they weren’t getting on the bridge.

  “Knock, knock, anybody home?” a grunting male voice asked as he stabbed a flashlight around the common room. “Damn, Danny, I think you’re right. It’s a whore ship. Look at this place!” He pointed his flashlight all over the puffy furniture and drapes of gauzy fabric. With genuine disappointment, he bemoaned, “Where’s all the whores?”

  “We ain’t here for no whores, Gary. We need script, stuff we can sell. Damn Randoms stripped our ship to the bone.”

  “Maybe we should just take this one,” another male voice said.

  “Hey, yeah! We could sell it! Most of this shit is way better than what we got.”

  They argued amongst themselves. Loudly. There was no clear leader. Duster rolled his eyes. Amateurs. Four desperate idiots. Apparently, they just survived an attack by Randoms. The space pirates were so dubbed due to their unpredictable nature. As Duster listened to them, he realized talking wouldn’t get him anything but trouble. He had to act, and he would only have the element of surprise once.

  Assessing them in the muted light that came from their own flashlights, Duster realized only one of them had a gun, and it looked like an ancient Sod Buster. He didn’t think any of those museum pieces were in actual use anymore. In fact, the only one he’d ever seen had been on the hip of Jace Lawless. Poor bastards really must be in dire straits.

  Gary held the gun out in a trembling hand. Good, that crummy gun made it a little more even. After plucking one of his blades out of his back pocket, Duster waited until they started forward again, then threw his blade right into Gary’s head.

  The blade thunked through his eye and into his brain so fast, Gary didn’t even scream. He just toppled back, dead on impact. The other idiots clustered around him in confusion, shining their lights on his body and each other.

  Duster readied another blade. When they looked up, he thunked his second blade into the one called Danny. It hit the front of his throat. Danny uttered a squealing gurgle out of the hole as he fell to his knees. Not dead on impact, but damn close.

  One of the other two idiots swung his flashlight around, caught Duster in the beam and charged like a bull. Duster threw his one left-draw blade but only hit the guy in the leg. The guy kept coming. When he got close enough, he launched himself, knocking Duster to the floor. As Duster grappled with the man, he lost sight of the other one.

  Pushing back on his attacker’s neck, Duster realized he wasn’t a man but a freaking kid. Twenty at best. Duster wanted to just subdue him, but the kid was stronger than he appeared and definitely looking to kill him. Having no choice, Duster got his big hands around the kid’s neck, did a sharp lift and twist, broke his neck, then dumped him to the floor.

  Panting hard, Duster darted his gaze frantically for the last. The lights came on, and Duster jumped back, taking cover in the main hallway.

  “Looky what I got.” The last man standing held Diane in front of him like a shield. He was no kid but a crafty man who hid behind the one person he’d correctly assessed Duster wouldn’t harm in any way.

  Diane’s robe was open as the belt still hung in tatters around her wrists. Burgundy silk skimmed down her beautiful, trembling body and he shot his gaze right to that patch of tawny hair in an enticing V. Duster forced his gaze to her face.

  Diane’s eyes were huge and her chin was queenly high. Not from pride but from a long, sweeping blade held there. Terror transfixed her. All at once, she looked compellingly beautiful and terrifyingly vulnerable. Diane must have come out of her room to see what was happening, perhaps to check on his well-being, and now this bastard had her.

  And in that instant, Duster realized he still loved her. He could rage at her and hide behind a wall of justifiable anger, but the love was still there, just as intense as it ever was. If that man holding her harmed her, Duster was going to make his death a slow and painful one. No one but no one was going to mess with his wife.

  “Guess I came in the middle of you coming.” The last interloper standing spoke with a grunting sneer to his voice. Placing one blade-filled hand to her neck, he lifted the other hand and cupped Diane’s generous breast. Duster did a slow burn when the man pinched her nipple with a quick twist, then slid his glove-clad hand lower. “What say we call a truce, have our fun with her, then split the goods on the ship?”

  “Sounds good.” Duster smiled as he considered. “Who gets to go first? You, me or Phil?”

  “Phil?” His head came up over Diane’s shoulder as he looked around.

  Duster pulled his last draw-right blade and thunked it to the man’s eye. As he slumped dead on impact to the floor, he took Diane with him.

  When something cool and wet pressed to her forehead, Diane opened her eyes. She was in her bedroom, in her bed, with Duster sitting beside her. Never in her life had she ever been so happy to see someone.

  “Have a nice nap?” Duster searched her face. “No, no, don’t get up.” He held her down with one big hand to her shoulder. “You hit your head on his knee and knocked yourself out.”

  That would explain why her brain felt like it would explode out of her skull. The only reason she had left her bed was to make sure Duster was safe. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” Duster held the cloth to her forehead. “Relax.”

  “Are they gone?”

  “Dead and. Tossed them back into their ship, then sent the ship away from us after turning on their distress beacon. Someone will eventually find and salvage the thing. Did it scare you when I threw the bl
ade?”

  “No.” When she’d looked up and saw Duster standing wide and steady, she’d been relieved. “I knew you wouldn’t miss. You were an expert seven years ago. I imagine you’ve only gotten better.” Judging by the calluses on his hands, he still spent a lot of time practicing. She was grateful she had not stripped him of weapons when she’d had the chance. “What—who were they?”

  “Probably traders.” He kept his voice low. “They got hit by Randoms and needed a quick score. Guess they thought your ship was an easy target.”

  Diane realized it would have been if Duster had not been here. “You saved my life.”

  “Not really. I just protected what’s mine.”

  Uttering a disappointed grunt of frustration, Diane closed her eyes. “Only you, Duster. Only you could take a potentially sweet moment and make it sour.” Pushing his hand away, she sat up, holding the washcloth to her forehead. Sitting upright made the pain swell with a pounding that forced her to lie down again. Curling to her side, Diane fought back tears. “Just leave me alone.”

  “What gratitude.”

  “I tried to be grateful, but you just wouldn’t let me.”

  Duster put his hand on her hip. So huge, his hand spanned her entire hip and part of her buttock. Caressing her with deliberate intent, he asked, “Just how grateful are you?”

  “You sick fetch.” Diane shoved his hand off, even though the movement made her head throb anew. “Now you expect me to show you my gratitude by spreading my—”

  Very gently, Duster rolled her over. “Don’t even say it, Diane.”

  “Right. You don’t want me to speak the truth, not when it involves the darkness in you.”

  Scrutinizing her with incisive eyes, Duster nodded. “Truth time, Diane.”

  “You mean where you considered that other fetch’s offer?” She still felt the man’s hand at her breast. Bile rose when she remembered that ugly hand seeking lower. “Do me and split the goods on my ship?”