Creed of Pleasure; the Space Miner's Concubine (The LodeStar Series) (2 page)

“Taara?” called Daanel from the front of the boutique. “Was that the door? Where are you, sweetie?”

Light, quick footsteps, then his loud gasp of shock. “
Taary!
Goddess, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh goddess, what happened?”

He dropped to his knees beside her and gathered her into his arms, patting her for injuries. “Okay, I’m linking the police and parameds. Hang on, sweetie, hang on. I’ve got you.”

He linked, while Taara did as he said and hung on. Not much else she could do at the moment.

When he was finished talking he laid his cheek on her hair. “Taary, you went out back—
why
? I told you to leave the trash for morning, that alley is dangerous. Anybody could be hiding out there—and they were.”

“I know,” she croaked. “Should’ve listened to you. Oh, D, we h-have to get out of here. Now.”

“Out of here?” Her cousin, his narrow face pale under his golden Serpentian coloring, cast a wild look around the storeroom. “Is there a bomb?”

“No. I mean we have to get out of this city.”

“Okay.” His face crumpled. “Oh, goddess, I shouldn’t have involved you in my mess. Taary, did they … rape you or hurt you?”

“Just my throat,” she insisted. “But you’re next, D. We have to get away from New Seattle.”

And she was going to make sure that happened. No matter whom she had to beg for help.
 

She knew just where to start. With the wealthiest, most powerful man she knew—Logan Stark.

Chapter Two

Taara Ravel stared at the man hovering via holovid image in the middle of her tiny sitting room. She sat on her small sofa, amid brightly hued cushions and even a holovid vista of dunes in a Serpentian desert, blue sky soaring above. The app had been expensive, but so worth it. Each time she looked at the golden sands she felt again the freedom of her childhood, playing under the burning sun.
 

She was not enjoying their effect now.

“You want me to … what?” she asked. Her voice rasped through her dry throat, still sore from the attack. The bruises were hidden underneath a cheap but fashionable scarf.

Logan Stark’s face remained calm despite her reaction. “I believe I was quite clear. I want you to seduce my youngest brother.”

That’s what Taara thought he’d said. She was just having trouble believing he’d said it. Logan Stark, space magnate and owner of the galaxy’s newest space cruise line, wanted her, a fashion sales clerk, to agree to prostitute herself … with
his brother
?
 

What kind of man even conceived an idea like that, much less proposed it as calmly as if he were suggesting she link the man for a date?

She swallowed hard as her stomach cramped with nauseating force. Most of the fluids in her body seemed to be roiling in her middle.
 

She’d been nervous about this interview, frightened even, but she’d worried Stark wouldn’t remember who she was, or that she wouldn’t get through his many layers of security and assistants. Or that when she finally did, it would be too late.
 

Never this.

“In return,” Stark went on, his deep voice smooth, “I’ll do as you’ve asked. I’ll make sure you and your cousin Daanel are safe from whoever is threatening you on Earth II by moving both of you—and his clothing boutique—to Frontiera.”

Taara shook her head, hoping the motion would clear the thick, noxious New Seattle fog, which had apparently settled in her brain. “I—I thought you’d help us,” she accused, hurt pushing up her throat in a thick, suffocating layer. She swallowed hard, forcing it back.”We’re Kiri’s friends.”
 

At the mention of his mistress, Stark’s face softened a little—at least she thought it did. But he continued to regard Taara with that enigmatic gaze, the same steely gray as the fog.
 

“This is why I’m prepared to help you. But as Kiri herself will tell you, I never do anything without a price of some kind.”

Taara could believe that all too well. She set her jaw, afraid if she spoke she’d scream obscenities at him. One thing was for sure, when this little interview was over, she was going to link Kiri and tell her a thing or two about her lover, or patron or whatever he was.
 

When he waited without speaking, she lifted her hands helplessly. “Why … why do you want me? There must be plenty of beautiful, experienced courtesans you could hire.”
 

Women who were willing to use their bodies to make their way in the galaxy.
 

She was not. Just the thought sent chills over her skin and deep inside her, to join the nausea. She felt as if she’d been given bad gesics or drunk too many blue stars, her favorite club drink—except that she did not feel the lovely, floating sensation the drink gave her. Instead, she felt like screaming.

He nodded politely. “A fair question. I want you precisely because you are
not
a courtesan. You are warm-hearted, loyal, amusing and beautiful. That’s what my brother needs, not the practiced attentions of a professional.”

Taara scowled. He may have just complimented her, but she still wanted to get her legs around his business-suited neck and squeeze until he choked. She could do it, too. Half-Serpentian, she knew some awesome fighting moves. She’d show him amusing.

And anyway, what kind of repulsive troll needed his big brother to get him a woman, even if he did live at a remote mining outpost? Stark owned a fleet of space ships, didn’t he? His brother could probably have a stream of females in and out every week, if he wished.

She’d narrowly escaped rape at the hands of the gangers who had delivered their warning in the alley behind Daanel’s shop. To be forced to have sex with another male, a stranger, did not seem much better.

Ignoring her shudder of distaste, or perhaps because of it, Logan Stark reached out one large, manicured hand, manipulating a com unit on the gleaming expanse of desk before him.

“In case you’re curious, this is my brother Creed. Creed Forth.”

Taara didn’t answer. For the second time in their conversation, she was speechless.

Creed.
The name filled her mind, whispered over her skin and sank deep inside her. Strangely, quelling her shivers and loosening the knot in her stomach.

Lean, muscular, his skin bronzed by the sun over his head, blond hair ruffling in the wind, he gazed back at her over one broad, bare shoulder, as if the link had interrupted his examination of the valley beyond. He looked young, about her age, but the smooth, angular planes of his face were set with an uncompromising purpose that echoed the mountains behind him. His mouth was beautiful, his bottom lip full, but it was pressed in a firm line, with no hint of a smile.

But his eyes … a blue as deep and mysterious as the clean, clear skies over Frontiera, they held the promise of a passion so deep Taara felt herself teetering, as if balanced on the highest peak of those mountains.
 

A passion that was her birthright as a Serpentian, famed for their sexual prowess, but that she’d thus far been denied. Oh, she’d had liaisons, but they’d been brief encounters in sex-cubbies in the back of dance clubs, fueled with loneliness and blue stars, not true passion. With this man, somehow she knew on an elemental level that there could be much, much more.

“I’ll leave you the link,” Stark said smoothly. “You have until tomorrow at this time to give me your answer. Oh, and Ms. Ravel? Not a word to Kiri or anyone else, or the deal is off.”

He disappeared, leaving Taara alone with the silent image of the man who was as far from a repulsive being as she’d ever seen. Creed Forth was magnificent. He was sex on a hot reactor core.

And he could be the answer to her and Daanel’s problem, their salvation.
 

The threats had begun with Daanel, but after the incident in the alley, the threats had also appeared on her own comlink. And this last week she’d been followed as she traveled to and from work at Maitresse, the most exclusive women’s boutique and spa in New Seattle.
 

One of her stalkers was small and skinny, but with a cruel smirk, the other a Mauritanian, huge and purple skinned, who smiled when Taara looked directly at him. It was not an attractive sight. His huge mouth full of jagged, yellowed teeth was guaranteed to give her nightmares. Just looking at the two made her shake with rage and fear. The alley had been dark, but she’d know these two anywhere.

Their message was clear. They could reach her at all times.
 

Terrible things would happen, unless Daanel paid the extortion, an amount that would break him, destroy the business he’d worked so hard to build.
 

And even when Taara reported her stalkers to the police, no one seemed to know who they were. Part of Tal Darkrunner’s gang? The ganger lord had kidnapped Kiri months ago, allegedly to protect her from a worse fate. Or were the extortionists part of that shadowy gang of whom even Darkrunner seemed afraid?

Just weeks before, Kiri had disappeared from a night of clubbing with Taara, only to reappear on Frontiera. Darkrunner claimed he’d done it to save her from a rival gang that was now into slaving—kidnapping innocent beings to sell them into the remote reaches of the galaxy.
 

Kiri was safely on Frontiera now, with Stark. And Taara wanted desperately to follow her friend there.
 

In a tearful reunion via holovid, just before the trouble started for Taara and Daanel, Kiri had told Taara how beautiful and clean the newly settled planet was and how much she liked Frontiera City, or F City as the settlers called it. Although she’d complained that there were few places to shop, which made it even more perfect for Taara and Daanel, since both were in the fashion industry.

Taara had wanted to follow Kiri then. Now she was frightened enough to beg Kiri’s wealthy lover for help to get her and Daanel there. But she would never use her body as payment.
 

Except that once before the same price had been demanded of her and instead of agreeing, she’d run away. And ended up paying the ultimate price—the loss of people she loved.
 

But this was different. Surely if she just reasoned with Kiri’s patron he would understand that helping her and Daanel would please Kiri, whom he cared about. Because, of course her answer to Stark’s degrading scheme was still an emphatic, unequivocal ‘No’.

Wasn’t it?

     
The wilds of Frontiera, that same day ...

Creed Forth swiped an arm over his brow. His sleeve came away wet, no surprise. He was sweating hard in the heat of a Frontiera summer day, even the moisture-wicking fabric of his long-sleeved shirt and pants unable to keep him cool. Late summer, which meant the vegetation here on the eastern slope of the mountains had cured to shades of gold and beige, and the ground was dry.
 

In an hour or so, the clouds building over the eastern horizon would blow this way and cool the atmosphere with a rain shower. But that was then. Now, he was stuck out here, alone in the baking heat, repairing a coupling on a big, multi-unit hover transport. He was far enough down the mountain that the shrubbery and grasses were only knee high. Further up the slopes, tall trees shaded the meadows and ravines. He wished to the seven hells he was up there now. Wouldn’t be that much cooler in the shade, but at least he’d have the illusion.

He was also sweating his stupidity. Should have brought a set of droids with him, not only for tech assistance but as lookouts. After a night of broken sleep, not his first lately, he’d been tired and edgy all day. Even when he was jolted awake by the strong Pangaean dark coffee he had flown in regularly with his supplies, he was still exhausted.
 

Dragged down by the grind of running the irridium mine he owned with his older brothers, Logan and Joran. Tired of keeping one eye open for those who wanted to swoop in and take by force what he and his crew worked to wrest from the mountain. The pirates been more active lately and Joran had sent word that there were rumors of some big coup planned.
 

Frontiera might have a state of the art sat-com system blanketing the planet, but there were still pirates out here in the wilds, bold enough to chance being caught on holovid. And frustratingly, there were just enough wanderers and settlers in the wild lands for pirates to blend in, until they were ready to take action.
 

The InterGalactic Space Forces kept a station here, staffed with pilots and the fastest cruisers available as well as long range weapons, but the pirates weren’t stupid—well, not all of them. The careless were soon caught and either went down in a firefight or were sent to Deep Six, the frozen prison planet. The smart ones hid out, blended with the wild tribes and then struck outlying farms and industry, such as the LodeStone mine.

Creed wished they’d attack and get it over with. He was ready for action, sick and tired of doing the same things day after day, and doing them with the same people. Even tired of the beautiful, wild place in which he lived. And although he knew this said more about his own mental state than his surroundings, he still felt it. A good fight would laser the ennui dragging him down.

He was the boss, major owner and manager of the mine, ruler of all he surveyed. This breakdown had been only the latest of many chunks of responsibility to land squarely on his shoulders.