Stark Surrender (23 page)

Kiri wondered if the receptionist would call security if Kiri knocked the woman on her ass right here. Liss smirked, trailing her talon-like nails back and forth across her deep cleavage.

Kiri narrowed her eyes. Had she really felt sympathy for the woman?

“Yes,” she agreed. “Logan Stark is tough. And so am I. So I suggest you go have another blue star or whatever it is you’ve been bathing in, and stay out of my way.”

Then she strode past the woman, her shoulder knocking the blonde aside as she passed. It was a sleazy move, but effective.

“Hey,” the woman said indignantly. “Uppity bitch. Like your shit’s full of stardust.”

Kiri ignored her. She hadn’t survived five years of trade school dormitories in this city for nothing.

“Hello, Opal?” said the receptionist said in frosty tones. “Please send someone up to the medcenter immediately. Ms. Liss needs an escort back to her quarters.”

Kiri didn’t wait to hear what Logan’s whore had to say about that.

So angry she was nearly panting, Kiri was in the elevator before she realized it. She hit the button for the bottom floor. She was in the mood to kick some ass—and since she couldn’t very well brawl in the medcenter reception area, she’d kick some spider ass instead.

If Bronc and Kai were surprised to see her, they didn’t let on. Bronc set her up in the small silver spider again, and Kiri set off for the back wall of the cave. And this time, she let her anger carry her straight up the high, variegated wall and out onto the ceiling.

She had turned and was half-way down the wall again before she realized Bronc and Kai were both on the cave floor, watching her come down. She raised her brows at them.

“How’d I do?” She may have been pretending Logan’s blonde was in her path, and had been mowed down under Kiri’s spider legs. The goal had lent a sense of purpose to her climb that stomped all over her fears of falling.

“Fucking fantastic,” Kai said. He looked over at Bronc and grinned with mock modesty. “That’s my sister.”

Bronc chuckled. “Nice job, Ms. te Nawa.”

“Call me Kiri,” she said. “Race you back to the top.”

With a whoop, Kai scuttled past her spider and up the wall, Bronc in pursuit. Kiri spun on the wall and followed them back up.

But, now that she’d calmed down, her anger at Logan returned with a vengeance. He’d kidnapped her into his sleazy slum apartment with his other woman, and now he’d brought that woman here.

Okay, she’d known about the woman, so why did she find herself devastated all over again? Because she hadn’t expected to have to face her again. The woman knew exactly what Logan-Lode had done to her, Kiri, in that bedroom. Not only had she done nothing to stop him, she’d seemed to approve of his actions—ugh.

And Kiri did not appreciate feeling as if she’d been tagged as another member of his sleazy harem. God, maybe he’d been setting himself up to be a pimp, or something. She looked down the cave wall and suddenly felt as if she was hanging over a precipice in more ways than one.

Her stomach rebelling, she froze at the corner of the ceiling. Logan was no longer the man she’d thought she knew, and just when he revealed the worst side of himself, she was carrying his child. The world she knew had spun out of control, and she was about to go into freefall.

Her comlink chimed, making her start violently. “Ms. te Nawa,” said a pleasant voice in her ear. “Mr. Stark is out of surgery. He’s asking for you.”

Kiri’s emotions were tangled in such a knot, she could hardly speak. “How is he?”

“Doing very well indeed. If you’ll come to the medcenter, we’ll escort you to him.”

No. She couldn’t face him now. Couldn’t sit at his bedside and smile with his actions as Lode still raw in her memory. “Thank you,” she said stiffly, “But there are others who’ll want to see him first.”

There was a short silence. “Very well, miss.”

“Kiri?” Kai said quietly. “You okay?”

Kiri inched her spider down the wall with painstaking slowness, and stopped on the floor. “No,” she whispered. “Not really.”

The two men climbed down to join her. Kai stopped beside her while Bronc passed them, headed for the staging area.

Kai popped out of his cockpit, and motioned to her to open hers. “Talk to me.”

Kiri clambered down from her spider, and took a deep breath, facing her brother.

“I meant to tell you yesterday. I’m … pregnant.”

Her brother’s eyes widened, and he stared at her. As he stood like a statue, Bronc slid out of his spider and jogged to them. “Hey, you okay here?”

Kai made a low sound in his throat, then cleared it. “Uh … yeah. We’re fine. Just give us a sec, okay?”

“Sure.” Bronc walked away. “Patroc! Come and help me park these things.”

Kai took a step closer to her. “Pregnant?” he asked in a strangled voice. “You’re sure?”

She nodded. “Yup. Medical certainty.”

Kai lifted both hands and ran them through his hair, then clasped his hands at the back of his head, his eyes wide. “Holy smoking comets. Just give me a sec. That’s a lot to process.”

“No joke,” she said, a hand to her belly.

“Are you … okay with it?” he asked, his gaze following the gesture. Behind him, Bronc and Patroc jogged to two of the spiders.

She took a breath, and nodded. “I wasn’t at first, but … I’ve always wanted kids. A family. It’s just gonna look a little different than I pictured.” To say the least. Her and Kai and Baby Pea, figuring it out as they went. Unless Kai didn’t want any part of being an uncle.

“Will you be … around?” she asked. “I mean, it’s my baby, but I’d like you to be part of her life.”

“Whoa,” he breathed. “It’s a girl?”

She nodded, and his face firmed with resolve. “Of course I’ll be around. Don’t know a quarking thing about babies, but … we can learn, right?”

“Right.” She smiled mistily at him. “Thank you. I … I haven’t told anyone else.”

The two bigger spiders walked past them, easing into their places in line.

Kai dropped his hands and straightened, his brows shooting together. “Okay. I think it’s time I had a word with Logan Stark. He is the father, right?”

“Yes, but no! I don’t want you to have a word,” she said. “Things are too complicated. I’ll tell him myself … when I get around to it. What I really want to do is just go home.”

Bronc, finished with the spiders, now stood between them and the big doors, arms crossed. He frowned at them. “Couldn’t help overhearing that last bit. You can’t leave. Ms te Nawa, Mr. Stark needs you here.”

“He hurt her, so he doesn’t get to need her,” Kai said.

“Mr. Stark won’t hurt her, Kai,” Bronc said.

“I’m not talking about physically,” Kai said.

“Right. Well, it’s completely unsafe for the two of you out there in the city. Anyone who leaves this compound might as well have a target painted on them.”

“So we’re trapped here because Logan went on some crazed vigilante crusade?” Kiri burst out. “That’s just great. Well, if he wants to be a street ganger, I’m sure the blonde will be happy to help him out. I won’t.”

Bronc’s look said he was disappointed in her. “Mr. Stark took on vicious gangers who were preying on innocent beings,” he rumbled. “That’s the kind of man he is ... even when he didn’t remember his own name. He takes care of people. Even those who don’t deserve it.”

Kiri gasped, and Kai stiffened. “You don’t think we deserve to be here, fine. We’ll leave now.”

“What?” Bronc lifted one hand, his heavy brows shooting together. “I wasn’t talking about you two. Great God beyond, you te Nawas are hot-tempered.”

“Then who are you talking about?” Kai demanded.

His tough face went blank. “Not my place to say. Ready to go up?”

Kiri shook her head. She was not ready to face Logan’s family, and their questions about why she wasn’t with him.

“Uh, if you need a place to hang, you’re welcome to my quarters,” Bronc offered. “Any time.”

Kai opened his mouth, but Kiri forestalled him. “Thank you. If we won’t be in your way.”

Bronc shook his head. “Make yourselves at home. Have a drink if you like. I have beer, some whiskey.”

“How manly of you,” Kai murmured.

“You could order some wine,” Bronc said, looking self-conscious. “Someone will bring it to you.”

Kiri elbowed her brother. “Whatever you have will be fine, thank you.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

However, they didn’t make it to Bronc’s quarters. In the elevator, a holovid of Joran Stark appeared. He looked angry and harassed.

“Kiri, if you don’t get your lovely ass to the medcenter now,” he said, “I will come get you and haul you here over my shoulder.”

She glared back at him, and he sighed, raking his long hair back off his forehead.

“Honey, look. Logan wants to talk to you. Says he’s getting up and coming after you, even though the doctors say he’s gotta stay flat on his back for the rest of the night ... which he won’t do unless you’re by his bed. So we need you here.”

Kiri crossed her arms. “Your brother,” she said clearly, “is a skrog’s ass. And I am done helping him.”

Joran’s brows shot up. “Won’t argue the skrog’s ass part at times. Done with him—you’ll have to sort that out with him. Can you get here soon before we have to tranq him?”

“Why don’t you tranq him?” Kai drawled.

“Because he needs to be awake so the doctors can check on the implant, ask him questions, and shit like that. Creed’s with him now, keeping him calm, but I can tell you that won’t last long.”

“Call Liss,” Kiri snapped. “I’m sure she can calm him down just fine.” The tramp would probably crawl into the airbed with him, naked.

Joran stared at her as if she’d spoken in tongues. “Why would I call her?”

“Because they’re together now,” Kiri said, although she nearly gagged on the words. “So I repeat, call her.”

“Kiri,” Joran said, gesturing widely, “Logan rescued Liss from a vicious pimp, and now he’s her hero. So, she’s hangin’ on to him. They are not a couple, and if she told you they are, she’s the one who’s lyin’.”

“It was more of a firsthand demonstration,” Kiri snapped.

“Hells, woman. And I thought my Zaë was trouble. I see Logan’s got his hands full too.”

Kiri frankly glared. “He does not have hands or anything else full with me.

“Kiri. Please come,” he coaxed. “Remember how much is riding on this.”

“Right, planetary economics,” she muttered. She wasn’t so sure she believed her actions had that much to do with the fate of Frontiera. But she couldn’t exactly turn her back, if it was true. “Oh, all right. One last time—and then that’s it. You Starks can deal with him yourselves.”

“Thank you.” Joran disappeared.

Kiri tipped her head back and made a horrible face at the elevator roof. “If Logan is lying there smiling when I walk in, all pleased with himself for manipulating me, I’m going to kill him.”

“You want me to come with you?” Kai asked. “I have a spare blade.”

Kiri rolled her head to look at him. “No, thanks. If I’m going to commit murder, I’d rather not involve you.”

He nodded. “Maybe wait until he’s not under medical observation, too. I’ll bet the surveillance in this building doesn’t miss a thing.”

“Probably true,” she muttered. “I’ll wait.”

Kai waited until the elevator stopped on the medcenter level, then nudged her. “I’m serious about one thing, Kiri. If you decide you don’t trust him, we’ll leave.”

“Thanks, bro.” Then she grinned at him. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”

He fiddled with the elevator controls. “Always wanted to hear it. Think I’m gonna like ‘Uncle’ too.”

* * *

Logan was recovering in a hushed, immaculate room with white and pale gray fitments. Medical holocharts hung in the air behind his bed.

Kiri had no idea what the various flowing colored lines and moving blips revealed about his condition, and although the chart titles were in Galactic, they were in medical terms she couldn’t decipher.

Logan’s bed was in shadow, with subdued glowlamps lighting the rest of the room. She hesitated in the doorway as a white coated doctor hovered at his bedside, murmuring to him as she waved a monitor of some sort slowly back and forth above his face.

“Enough for now,” Logan said finally.

“Yes sir,” the woman said. “I will be back in thirty minutes to do more tests.”

She moved away from the bed, eyeing the holocharts before walking through another door into a brightly lit room.

“Kiri.” Logan held out his hand, and Kiri crossed the room slowly to his bedside. He wore a white nightshirt, a gray thermal blanket covering him from the chest down.

“Are you supposed to rest now?” She peered at him, unable to see his face well in the shadows. Surely he’d be bandaged up again after the surgery.

“Where have you been?” he demanded. “I thought you’d be here when I woke.” His voice was slurred, as if he was still under the influence of sedatives.

“Would you like me to send Liss in instead?” she asked. “She’s very anxious to see you.”

“What? No—I want you. Come closer ... ‘less the sight is too much for you.”

“I don’t know,” she said, laying her hand in his outstretched one just so he would relax. “I can’t see you.”

His big hand closed around hers, warm and strong. “I can see you ... in beautiful detail. And I can see your heat signature ... and moisture content—and if you had any cerametal on you, I could see that too.”

“Great. Knew I should’ve combed my hair before I came to see you,” she joked feebly. Just what a woman wanted to hear—that a man could see all her flaws. She resisted the impulse to touch a hand to her hair.

“You are perfect,” he said, in a tone that sent a thrill of reluctant pleasure through her.

Then he tensed, and when he spoke again, his voice was toneless. “Would you like to see me? I’ll understand if you don’t.”

“Of course I want to see you.” She squeezed his hand. “If you’re ready.”

“No time like this nanosec,” he muttered.

A glowlamp brightened over his head, and for the first time  since his injuries, Kiri saw him without the eye patch.

She gasped in wonder. She hadn’t seen his injury, but it must have been horrific under that patch, because she knew he’d lost his right eye and all the skin on that part of his head.

The doctors had done an amazing job. At first glance, his right eye was just as it had been. Oh, his eyelid and the skin under his brow were swollen and bruised, and he was still too thin and pale, but other than that he was Logan again.

Kiri leaned closer, smiling with delight as she examined him, her free hand on his chest. “Your eyebrow and lashes weren’t damaged, then?” she marveled. How was that possible?

“Oh yes. They were burned away by the acid. What you see is re-implanted, like the hair on my scalp.”

Kiri shook her head wonderingly, leaning closer to examine his lashes. “Someone who doesn’t know you wouldn’t notice the regrowth at all.” This close she could, because the lashes were too precisely spaced, but she supposed that would change with time.

“I don’t give a damn about anyone else,” he said. “I care what you think.”

She met his gaze warily. “I think ... you look wonderful,” she said, her voice so husky it cracked on the last word. “You are a handsome man, Logan Stark. Now more than ever.” Because he’d survived.

His gaze flickered back and forth, searching hers with typical Logan intensity. Whatever he saw there made him relax. “Good. That’s all right then.”

He tugged her hand higher on his chest, and stroked the back with his thumb. Kiri let him, fascinated by the differences in his actual eyeballs. The new cybernetic eye was the same hue as his other, but it didn’t look quite real. It was too perfect. The pupil was precisely symmetrical, the tiny serrations exactly even as it contracted, the motion slightly different than his real eye.

She flinched as a reddish light flashed in the cyber eye’s depths. “Oh, my God. What was that? Is it all right?” Was it going to explode in his skull? “I’ll call someone.”

Logan held her there, his hand tightening on hers. “Hush, kitten. Whatever you saw is normal. I’m not sure of all the workings, yet. Give me a day or two with the techs and I’ll explain further.”

She frowned at him. “But you should rest now.”

His hand tightened around hers, and he opened his eyes again. “Only if you’ll stay. They’ll wake me soon anyway.”

She sighed. “All right.”

“Good. Sit back in the chair and put your feet up. I know you like that.”

She complied, because she knew he would fight sleep if she didn’t. When his hold on her hand relaxed and his breathing evened out, Kiri watched him sleep, frowning uneasily as he twitched, relaxed and then started again, his head turning restlessly on the air pillows, his long legs shifting under the light covers.

The doctors had to have hooked the eye up to his brain for it to work. Was something going wrong with the connection?

Now profoundly uneasy, she rose, ready to call for help. But when she turned to the door, Joran and Zaë were there. Zaë smiled at her.

“I think Logan’s having a seizure,” Kiri said, beckoning to them.

Joran shook his head as they moved closer. “He’s dreaming, honey. Been doing this since Navos healed him. Says memories—good and bad—flash through his mind like a holovid on hyper-speed.”

Kiri rose to stand with them. “Memories from when?”

“From far in the past, to recent times, all in random order,” Zaë said. “It seems to be our minds’ way of dealing with getting all the memories from both times sorted to make sense, after the drugs have suppressed them.”

“You went through this too,” Kiri realized. “I’m so sorry.”

Logan groaned, and they turned as one to watch him. “My episodes weren’t nearly as severe as Logan’s,” Zaë said. “I had a much smaller dose of the drug.”

“This was a more potent chemical mix too,” Joran added. “Someone wanted to take Logan down for keeps.”

As Logan jerked in his sleep, his broad chest quivering with his quickened breathing, Kiri moved back to his bedside. She couldn’t bear to see him like this. She reached out to lay her hand on his shoulder, then froze with her hand a few inches from him, remembering the last time she’d awakened him by touching him.

“Go ahead, honey,” Joran said quietly at her shoulder. “It’ll be all right. You know this is Logan again.”

Slowly, Kiri laid her hand on Logan’s bare arm. He turned his head toward her on the pillows, but didn’t open his eyes. Instead he sighed deeply and relaxed.

“He needs you,” Zaë said. “After my healing session with the Indigon therapist, I was disoriented, and frightened by my dreams. I got so I was terrified to sleep, and became exhausted. I only felt safe if Joran was holding me.”

“The next days, maybe weeks, are gonna be tough,” Joran agreed. “Logan has one of the finest minds of our time, but right now he’s still healing in more ways than we can see.”

Kiri gazed down at the sleeping man who had been the focus of all their fears and hopes for the last weeks. She eased his hand back to the bed. His fingers tightened on hers, then went slack, letting her go. She stepped back, but even as she did so, she felt invisible bonds wrapping around her, tethering her fast.

She was connected to Logan in ways that could never be eradicated. They’d been lovers, and now they were going to be parents … and one day soon he would have to be told this. And no matter how she felt about him, and how much it would hurt to be around him but not with him, he deserved to know his daughter, which meant he would continue to be part of Kiri’s life as well.

“And not to alarm you even more, Kiri,” Joran said somberly, “We’ve been getting some reports from the streets out there that are not good. There’s a lot of movement in the New Seattle underworld. We’ve got to find this Mordacity and annihilate him and his gangers before they deal any more death and destruction on this city. We all need Logan sharp for that.

Kiri stared at him. “Do you think he has information about Mordacity?”

“He was in the streets against them for weeks, so he probably has intel, yeah. We’ll get Bronc in, talk about it as soon as he’s awake and aware enough.”

Joran laid a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, not tryin’ to scare you. I just need you to know that you and Kai can’t leave now. Not until we’re sure it’s safe for any of the family to leave here.”

Kiri nodded, but she gazed at Logan. He slept, resting in this quiet place, but it was the epicenter of a dark storm. And not only was he healing, they were in the midst of an attack from an unseen enemy, one who seemed to want not only to take over the streets of New Seattle, but to annihilate Logan and everyone who mattered to him.

All of which meant that she couldn’t leave him now, and she couldn’t keep her distance. Her heart sank. She had to stay at his side, and deal with her own tumult of conflicted love, anger and fear as best she could.

“We’ll stay—Kai and I. Don’t worry.” It sounded like Joran, Creed and Bronc were going to have more than enough to be concerned with.

Joran put his hand on Kiri’s shoulder, and leaned in to press a quick kiss to her temple. “Thank you, honey.”

Kiri nodded. She’d stay ... but it was going to cost her. Hopefully not more than she could stand to lose.

* * *

Logan lay alone in his medcenter. Cushioned in absolute comfort, surrounded by tech all purchased and maintained with his vast wealth, and beings whose talents and skills were unsurpassed, and who all worked for him.