Interstellar Service and Discipline 03 Fallen Star.lit

by Morgan Hawke

  Praise for the writing of Morgan Hawke

  Interstellar Service and Discipline: Victorious Star

  This story knocked me off my feet … I can honestly say it is the best thing I have read all year, and Morgan Hawke has become afavourite of mine after reading just one book. I can’t recommendVictorious Star highly enough, go and buy it now.

  --Jaynie Ritchie,Romance Junkies

  Victorious Staris a fabulous novel, jam-packed with action, adventure, and sex … I recommend this book without reservation.

  -- Barb Chan,Just Erotic Romance Reviews

  I've never read such an intense book! From start to finish, this book had me glued to my PDA … I highly recommend this book. It's definitely going on my "keeper" shelf.

  -- Amy L. Turpin,The Romance Studio

  Victorious Staris a fantastic read. It keeps readers glued to the pages and interested it what will happen next. Morgan Hawke created an alluring tale that is well written and exciting.

  -- Claudia Maldonado,The Road to Romance

  [Hawke] manages to combine a very good, complexly plotted science fiction story, with a scorching erotic bisexual BDSM ménage. It’s a fairly long story (300+ pages), but it was so riveting that I finished it in one day – it was that hard to put down. I have to consider this one of my Recommended Reads for this month.

  -- Jean.Fallen Angel Reviews

  Interstellar Service and Discipline: Victorious Staris now available from Loose Id.

  INTERSTELLAR SERVICE AND DISCIPLINE:

  FALLEN STAR

  Morgan Hawke

  www.loose-id.com

  Warning

  This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Loose Id e-books are for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.

  * * * * *

  This book is rated:

  For substantial explicit sexual content, graphic language, violence and situations that some readers may find objectionable (multiple partners, ménage, bondage, domination/submission, other.)

  DISCLAIMER: Many of the acts described in our BDSM/fetish titles can be dangerous. Loose Id publishes these stories for members of the community in which these acts are known and practiced safely. If you have an interest in the pleasures and pains you find described herein, we urge you to seek out advice and guidance from knowledgeable persons. Please do not try any new sexual practice, whether it be fire, rope, or whip play, without the guidance of an experienced practitioner. Neither Loose Id nor its authors will be responsible for any loss, harm, injury or death resulting from use of the information contained in any of its titles.

  Interstellar Service and Discipline: Fallen Star

  Morgan Hawke

  This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by

  Loose Id LLC

  1802 N Carson Street, Suite 212-29

  Carson City NV 89701-1215

  www.loose-id.com

  Copyright © May 2005 by Morgan Hawke

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced or shared in any form, including, but not limited to printing, photocopying, faxing, or emailing without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC.

  ISBN 1-59632-119-9

  Available in Adobe PDF, HTML, MobiPocket , and MS Reader

  Printed in the United States of America

  Editor: Erin Mullarkey

  Cover Artist: Angela Knight

  Dedication

  For AK -- who saw a hero where I saw a villain, and demanded that he be given his due.

  And Jaynie -- for her spectacular and thorough advice.

  AK’s SPs -- I count myself lucky to know and have the support of such fine ladies.

  Chapter One

  Dyson’s Ring outpost station

  Under-City -- in a back alley ...

  Evening cycle

  Fallon stared up at the deeply shadowed, towering steel walls of the alley’s dead end and ground her teeth. The door that was supposed to be at the end of this alley was nowhere to be found. “Damn it all, this isn’t where I’m supposed to be!”

  Most of the lights in the station’s industrial deeps had gone out, or been shot out, so it was hard to see as a rule, even with her night-sight eye augmentations. The worst part was that everything down in this steel maze of pipes and installations looked pretty damned uniform, right down to the corrosion stains. There was no telling how far off course she actually was.

  She needed directions, and fast.

  In three steps she reached the steel wall of the alley and a long pipe with a faded and peeling telecommunications logo. She lifted her knee and selected a slender tap from the array of small, delicate tools tucked into the battered leather of her tall boots. A swift punch with another one of her tools broke the pipe’s casing, and then it was just a matter of uncoiling her hotwire, jacking the tap into the communications wires, and shoving her wire into the data port at the base of her skull.

  Her internal communications program spat code into the wire.

  She looked down at the grimy steel floor, sweeping a gloved hand down her black skin suit. She cringed in disgust. The suit was smeared with filth and the seams were torn in a number of places. All the pipes she had crawled through and the roofs she had nearly fallen from to avoid her pursuer had really taken a toll on the once-sleek leather. It was going to cost a fortune to replace the damned thing, but she didn’t have much of a choice. She needed it for work.

  “Station Master, spit it out and make it quick.” The voice was electronic and annoyed.

  She grinned. “Hey, Peter, this is the Fallen Star.”

  “Izzie! Where in fury have you been, wench?”

  She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I miss you, too, but right now, I’m in a jam. I need directions and quick.”

  “Stand by for subliminal download.”

  “Standing by.” A trickle of white noise was introduced over the line. Fallon nodded. “Receiving download; thanks, Peter.”

  “Hey, no problem. You still playing pixie for the bad guys?”

  Fallon sighed. “Got to make a living somehow.” She stomped her feet to break the mud off her tall boots. They were crusted with muck to the knees. She didn’t even want to think about what was snarled in her cropped shoulder-length black hair. Bloody Fate, I need a bath ...

  “You could always come down to Neverland and play pixie for me ...?” The pout carried crystal clear over the connection.

  Fallon shrugged. “I love you, Peter, but I can’t live hardwired to a couch like you do. I’ve got a fully functional body. I’d like to use it.”

  “Fine, be that way, but you could visit. In fact you should visit. You’re way overdue for a bug hunt. God only knows what’s been dropped into your head between pirate ships.”

  Fallon winced. He had a point. She probably needed a thorough cleaning. “That’s not a bad idea. Are any of the other lostlings down there?”

  There was a heavy electronic sigh. “They’re all outside. Come down and play with me, Izzie.”

  “Tell you what, as soon as I lose the guy currently on my tail, I’ll drop by for
a long visit.”

  “Who’s tailing you?” The electronic voice was threaded with anger. “I told you not to play with the bad guys!”

  “It’s not the boss.” Fallon sighed. “It’s some white-haired foreign guy in pointy black armor.”

  “Fangs, pointy ears, weird eyes, and perverted as all get-out?”

  Fallon frowned. That was exactly what was tailing her. “Yeah ...”

  “Come home now!”

  Fallon’s frown deepened. “Now?”

  “Now, Izzie. I’m serious. The Imperium pays those guys to take criminals, and the Fallen Star is high on the criminal collection list!”

  Fallon winced. “Yeah, well, being a good professional thief has its disadvantages ...”

  “Izzie, if they get you, you are not coming back!”

  Fallon snorted. “Relax, Peter, there isn’t any place I can’t break out of ‑‑”

  “Izzie! I’m not playing here! If they get you, you won’t come back, because you won’t want to come back; you’ll want to stay with them!”

  Fallon rolled her eyes. “Peter, you know nothing can hold me.”

  “Izzie, I mean it. Get down here! Don’t make me use the codes to get you down here.”

  She gasped. He was actually threatening her with the command codes? “Peter!”

  “Come home now, Izzie!”

  “Okay, okay, Peter, I’ll come home, but I don’t want him following me down, so let me lose him first.”

  “Don’t bother. Let him follow; I’ll take care of him. Follow the map, and get your little ass down here right now.”

  She sighed. Damned nanny. You’d think she was still a skinny ten-year-old with scraped knees running through drainpipes from the bigger kids. “Okay, Peter. I’m on my way.”

  “Good. Go!” The line died.

  Fallon rolled up her wire and tucked the tap back into her boot while scanning the information she’d just downloaded. She wasn’t anywhere near where she was supposed to be. She groaned. Piss ... She hadn’t thought she had drifted that far off course. She was going to have to backtrack.

  A low, masculine chuckle echoed in the alley. “Dead-end, thief.”

  Her heart slammed in her throat. Blood and Fate, not again? She turned sharply to look behind her. Her pursuer was little more than a silhouette of broad-shouldered moving blackness, yet he filled the alley with his intimidating presence.

  Damn it! She’d known he was close, but she hadn’t thought he was that close! How, by burning fury, was he finding her so fast? The stupid, stubborn brute ... She turned her back on him and set her gloved hands on the steel wall, but it was too slippery with night condensation to climb. Shit, shit, shit!

  “You are out of options, thief.” His chuckle echoed at her back. “Yield, and save yourself some grief.”

  She backed up against the steel wall and dropped into a fighter’s crouch with her fists raised. “I’m not down yet!”

  “But you will be.” He stepped across a small beam of light that cut through the misty darkness to caress his sculpted, overlapping black body armor. It shimmered with oily iridescence, as though made of midnight rainbows. Silver gleamed in the frost white of his hair. Shadows deepened the pale and brutally handsome lines of his high cheekbones and strong jaw. Pairs of silver rings glittered in the lobes of his pointed ears, accentuating the decorative cuts along the lower arches. The long tail of his severe braid fell well past his broad shoulders and swung at his narrow waist as he approached. “You will go down, and you will yield.”

  Fallon felt her pulse beat in her throat. He was fully armored, and all she had was a thin layer of battered leather. Fate and damnation, she didn’t want to fight him again, but she didn’t have a whole lot of choice. “You haven’t caught me yet.”

  “Oh, no?” His white brows rose over bright, amused sapphire-blue eyes. Feline green-gold reflected in their depths. His full lips curved into a cruel smile. “Have it your way.” The points of his canines gleamed. “But there’s only one way out ...” He opened his arms, his hands pointedly empty of the weapons she knew he carried, daring her to get past him.

  She took the dare in a flurry of fists and feet.

  The exchange of fists, kicks, and curses was vicious and short. He trapped her arm and grappled her into a chokehold with both of her wrists wedged up to the center of her back, wrapped in one large paw.

  She was just too damned tired.

  “This hunt is over, thief.” His breath was harsh and hot against her ear. “You lose.”

  Fallon sucked a breath past the armored arm jammed across her windpipe. Bloody Fate, he has a tight grip. Smart move on his part; she was very limber. If he gave her the smallest increment, she would wiggle free. She arched her spine, coming up on her toes to relieve the ache. Not that it did much good. He was more than a head and a half taller, and his shoulders were twice hers in width. He didn’t look nearly this big when he introduced himself in the bar. But then, he hadn’t been wearing pointy black armor, either.

  She sucked air past his chokehold. “Sobehk, you are cutting off the circulation in my arms.”

  “Oh, really?” Sobehk’s chuckle made the hair on her arms rise. “That’s too bad, Fallon. Or should I say, Isabeau Torne Fallon?”

  Fallon froze. He knew her whole name? Where, by fury, had he heard that? Not even her boss knew more than her handle!

  “Do you yield?” His voice was a sinister purr in her ear. “Or do I need to break something?”

  Damn it, she couldn’t afford the time off to heal a broken arm. “All right, fine, I yield. So now what?”

  “Now, you go down.” His foot hooked hers and she fell to her knees. He dropped down on one knee with her, keeping her wrists jammed tight up against her spine, with his arm snug around her throat. “And you stay down.”

  Fallon hissed to keep from yelping and arched back sharply. The uneven pavement dug into her knees, and both shoulders were painfully close to dislocation. “Take it easy on the arms, you big brute. I’m not a marine cyborg!” She was robotically augmented for agility, not power.

  “No, but you are one slippery thief.” His hand tightened on her wrists. “I’m not taking any chances with losing you again.”

  She bit back an escaping whimper. “Yeah, I’m a thief. What did you expect? This is a smuggling outpost -- everybody’s a thief.” She wriggled her fingers, but all she could feel was his damned body armor. It had to be some kind of titanium alloy; he moved like it didn’t weigh more than paper, but there wasn’t a drop of give to it. She hadn’t been able to land a single effective blow. Her foot was still bruised from that last kick she’d aimed at his kidneys. This really sucks ...

  Damn it! She didn’t have time for this shit. She set her teeth. “Look, whatever you intend to do to me -- beat me, fuck me, or whatever ... Can you hurry up and get it over with? I have shit to get done.”

  His arm tightened on her throat. “What? Do you have a quota or something, thief?”

  She turned her head slightly and sucked in a small breath past his chokehold. “Or something ...” Blood and Fate, yeah, she had a quota; everyone on this blasted outpost had some kind of quota to fill. She was lucky that she was damned good at filling hers, because this stupid game of hide-and-seek had taken far too much of her productive time. “Just do it, all right?”

  “I’ll get to it when I’m damned good and ready.” Sobehk’s voice rumbled in a deep growl. “If you wanted a quick end to this, you should have yielded two days ago when I caught you the first time.”

  Fallon snorted. “You could have given up two days ago when I got away the first time.”

  “Too bad for you.” Sobehk actually chuckled. “Once I start a hunt, I finish it.” His long teeth caught the lobe of her ear in a tender bite. “You shouldn’t have picked me for a target.”

  Fallon tilted her head away from his mouth. “You shouldn’t have pissed me off!”

  He nipped at her exposed throat. “What? Don’t you like sex?�
� He made a sound that might have been a growl, but it sounded a lot closer to an actual feline purr.

  Fallon shivered in spite of herself. “Sure, I like sex -- with guys that aren’t assholes!” She tried to twist, even a little, but his grip on her arms was far too tight. “Look, grabbing people and kissing them within seconds of stating your name is not the way to pick up women.”

  “Is that so?” He purred right into the curve of her ear. “Then why did you kiss me back?”

  Fallon felt her face heat. She had kissed him back; Sobehk was a damned good kisser. “So I kissed you, big fat hairy deal. That didn’t mean I wanted to have sex in the middle of a crowded bar.”

  “Are you sure?” His deep chuckle curled straight down into her gut. “I didn’t hear any complaints until after I had your bare tit in one hand and you were ready to cum on my other.”

  “Of course not!” Fallon scowled as her cheeks flushed with more heat. “I was flat down on the table with your tongue shoved down my throat. I had to bite you to get your mouth off mine so I could tell you to stop.”

  “I thought you were just being affectionate.” His voice practically purred ... then the sound drifted into a growl. “Until you took off on me.”

  Fallon pitched her voice as sweet as sugar. “And I thought you were just being a perverted asshole, which is why I took off on you.”

  Sobehk stiffened and his voice rumbled deep in his chest. “Is that why you took my turbo glider?”

  “Well, yeah.” She winced under the increased pressure. If he gripped her any tighter, he was going to break her arm. “You pissed me off!”

  Sobehk relaxed slightly and barked out a laugh. “You were pissed because I almost made you cum right there in front of everybody.”

  Fallon ground her teeth. She remembered only too well exactly how close -- and how fast -- he had brought her to the trembling edge of orgasm. He was damned attractive, in a big, scary kind of way, and he was really good with his hands and his mouth. She had spent over an hour with her fingers in her wet flesh, trying to ease the burning hunger he had stirred in her before she had fled. The smug bastard ... “And you’re pissed now because it took you three days to catch me.”