Wanted: White Russian (2 page)

Knowing this wasn't a battle she was going to win, Tiressa stood and stalked out of the bar without a word, not even bothering with a tip. She knew they'd follow her. Even if they didn't, they knew where she'd docked and wouldn't release the docking clamps until they had Dubnikov aboard her ship.

On the way there, Tiressa tried to think of a way out of this, but she had very few—if any—options. Her cargo hold was full, she had no escape pods, and there was no way in hell she was getting off this station unless the station guard let her.

She couldn't simply space him. No matter what he'd done, she wasn't a killer. She couldn't have them secure him in the cargo hold—there simply wasn't a nook or cranny to be found.

That left either her personal quarters or the cockpit. She definitely wasn't having him tied to her bed, so, when they reached her ship, she had the guards secure him to the back bulkhead. It was the best of a bad situation.

"All secure, sweetheart. Cybernetic enhancements or not, he's not breaking those titanium chains."

Tiressa closed her eyes and exhaled deeply before replying. "I'm not your sweetheart." There was a moment when she was sure the guard started to give her a snide reply, so she turned in her chair to face him. Slowly, she stood to her full five foot, nine inch height. She wasn't much shorter than the guard and stood nose to nose with him, bringing all the intimidation of her size and height to bear.

12

Wanted: White Russian

by Marteeka Karland

"Now, get the fuck off my ship." She didn't raise her voice.

She didn't have to. She might have only been a cargo transport engineer, but she knew how to use her size to intimidate. Even if the one in question was bigger than she was.

"I'd be careful, if I were you," one of the guards muttered as he left the ship.

"Yeah. You think?" She spat her reply as he headed down the landing ramp before it slowly raised and sealed.

Swearing under her breath in seven different languages, Tiressa fired up the ship's engines and began a pre-launch checklist. There was no way in hell the day could get any worse. She just hoped Dubnikov had been lashed down securely. She sure as hell wasn't getting close enough to check. Like it or not, the guard was right. Tiressa had to keep her wits about her and watch her unwanted passenger like a hawk. The only problem was, the reason she'd landed on this gods forsaken station to begin with was because of the nebula storms. Now, she was flying right into them.

This was definitely not her day.

Things were definitely going well today. The miserable bastards on this station who passed for security had played right into his hands. It would have been bad enough they were giving one of the worst hardened criminals in seven galaxies to a non-sanctioned, non-military transport, but to force him on a single woman with no genetic or cybernetic enhancements to defend herself was unforgivable.

Not only that, but the transfer had been signed by the head commander in the area. This didn't bode well for High 13

Wanted: White Russian

by Marteeka Karland

Command. Yuri had been planted so deep it was likely that, had this station actually handed him over to the proper authorities, he would have been executed before word could reach them he was undercover. Only the Supreme Commander himself knew of Yuri's operation. It was the first rule of running black ops. If you have a secret, keep it to yourself. Tell one other person only if absolutely necessary.

There wasn't another option. It was a code Yuri had lived by since he'd first been chosen for the Imperial Special Forces.

Now, he looked at the woman who would be his captor for the next few days. True, she looked like she could hold her own in a fight, but it didn't take long for Yuri to realize she had absolutely no military or combat training whatsoever. He could tell by the way she held herself, and her weapon. She was carrying it out of obligation, not like it was an extension of her body. As he watched her stalk around the tiny cockpit, the twist of her luscious ass encased in black leather made him grin.

"Nice ass, baby. Gives me something to look forward to when we're all alone in the blackness of space." His voice was husky with lust, and he didn't try to disguise it. "I can't wait to sink my teeth into one of those plump cheeks." He put as much crass contempt in his voice as he could. Her ass might have grabbed his attention, but her response stole his heart in a way he never expected a woman to do.

She stopped her work, but she didn't turn around. Not at first, anyway. But when she did, flames practically shot from her eyes straight into his gut. Slowly, ever so slowly, she approached him, never taking her eyes from his.

14

Wanted: White Russian

by Marteeka Karland

"You like my ass?" Her voice was soft, but there was an undercurrent of deadly anger.

He knew he should just smirk at her and refuse to answer.

It would have been the wisest thing to do, but he had never really been one to play it safe. "Looks good enough to eat."

He snapped his teeth at her for added effect, leaning forward to strain his chains, causing them to rattle with the movement. Her reaction was almost instantaneous.

In two long strides, she was on him. There was a flash of steel and a sharp sting underneath his chin as her blade found its mark. For a split second, Yuri thought she had him, thought her knife would go straight through his neck and find his brain stem. A quick death to be sure, but she stopped with only a couple of millimeters of her blade into his flesh.

"Let's get one thing straight, flyboy. I'm not here to be your personal fuck toy. I got drafted to bring your ass to the Justice Warriors. If your public rap sheet is to be believed, my killing you would only save the taxpayers a lengthy trial and an execution. I may not be a combat soldier, but I have absolutely no problem gutting you like a Travarian sloth. Do we understand each other?"

Yuri was honestly afraid to move, but in that one instant, he knew he was in love. Instead of making a smart-assed comment, as he normally would, he simply replied with,

"Perfectly."

For several moments, they stood there, looking at each other. Yuri was sure lust flared in his eyes, and he didn't try to conceal it. He wanted her to know what she was getting herself into. Especially since she thought him the monster his 15

Wanted: White Russian

by Marteeka Karland

cover painted. Best to get it all out in the open now. Her eyes widened slightly, and she backed up a fraction before jerking her knife away and sheathing it in one smooth motion.

Without another word, she spun around, stomped to the control station and threw herself into the seat.

Yuri smiled. This was definitely turning out to be his day.

[Back to Table of Contents]

16

Wanted: White Russian

by Marteeka Karland

Tiressa's heart pounded as she finished preparing the ship for takeoff. There was no way this was a good idea. She'd have to space him the first chance she got. That was a man who could talk a woman right out of her panties with little to no effort at all and kill her before she knew he'd turned on her. She was terrified of him, of the kind of man he was, yet there was some kind of magnetism about him she knew she was helpless to resist for long.

Her clearance for departure came long before she was ready to leave, and the docking clamps released with an audible clang. The station docking personnel practically shoved her out of the hangar and locked the door tightly, refusing to answer her calls that her ship wasn't ready to leave.

"Sons of bitches," she swore under her breath. "I should have known better."

"Better than what? To take refuge from a nebula storm?"

Her "guest" echoed her thoughts quietly. Strange how he truly sounded concerned. Probably for his own hide. "One wrong move, and we're both history. Have you ever navigated a nebula storm on your own?"

Tiressa ignored him. Establishing any kind of common ground with him would be a mistake. She'd do the best she could. If she failed, they'd both be dead. She was still shaking from her fit of temper earlier. She'd gotten so close to him, she could smell his unique, masculine scent and the stale 17

Wanted: White Russian

by Marteeka Karland

tang of sweat clinging to him from his incarceration. If he hadn't been bound securely, he could have done some serious damage to her.

With many misgivings, Tiressa fired her thrusters and maneuvered away from the closed docking bay. Plasma starbursts from the storm sparkled and snapped an ungodly amount of energy. Little sparks of fire-like light exploded where the energy made it past the security field surrounding the station.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Dubnikov's gravelly voice was low and unobtrusive, as if he were making sure not to distract her even though they had yet to leave the shelter of the station.

Tiressa didn't answer at first, but the more she thought about it, the more she felt she owed him an answer. He might be a hardened, sadistic sociopath, but if he was going to die, he deserved to make peace with whatever deity he believed in.

"No. But I don't have much of a choice. They want you off this station and, unfortunately, that means they're kicking us out. I suppose if you pray, now's the time."

"I can help you navigate this if you'll let me." Tiressa didn't like the way his voice slid under her skin. Even in this situation, where she was pretty sure they were going to die, she wanted to groan. The man simply oozed sex. It was disconcerting, to say the least.

"Can you do it from over there? Chained? Because I'm not letting you loose. I'm not stupid." She tried to fill her voice with as much contempt as she could.

18

Wanted: White Russian

by Marteeka Karland

"Fine. Just do what I tell you, and maybe we'll make it."

That surprised her. She had expected his offer would come at a price, most likely his freedom. After all, he was dead no matter what. There was no way he would be allowed to live once he was turned over to the Justice Warriors. Not with the crimes he had been accused of.

Without waiting for her to respond, he started giving quiet instructions. "Turn off your main engines. You're less likely to ignite the plasma if you use only your thrusters and only in short bursts."

"With the main engines shut down, I won't be able to move quickly."

"If you need to move that quickly, you're already dead."

His inflection didn't change. It was almost maddening. The man could have been an android. Well, if it hadn't been for the almost palpable lust when she'd held that knife to his throat.

She swallowed. "I see what you mean. OK, any help would be appreciated."

"Just drift with the flow. The stellar material is highly unstable, but if you just flow through the nebula where it takes you, it will act like a river, taking you downstream between the banks."

"And if I hit a rock?"

"That's what the thrusters are for. When you see you're headed for a pocket of active stellar material, you glide around it."

Tiressa turned her seat to look at him. "Glide around it?

Are you fucking nuts?"

19

Wanted: White Russian

by Marteeka Karland

He just gave her a sexy grin and shrugged one brawny shoulder. "I'm just telling you the way I do it. It's always worked for me."

She swiveled her chair sharply back to the viewscreen. "I must be out of my mind."

"Quite possibly," he replied, seeming to think it over seriously, "but I've always thought most women secretly had a danger fetish. I'm betting you're getting excited just thinking about trying this."

"Correction,
you're
the one out of his mind. I just want to be safe and sound back inside that space station, away from the danger."

"So you say, but I notice you didn't try really hard to stay.

Had you put as much effort into bullying the station authorities as you did with me a while ago, I seriously doubt we'd be out here now."

She wanted to deny it, but what was the use? She'd always hated being cooped up. She'd been raised in the vastness of space, wandering from station to station, planet to planet at will. The thought of being cornered until nature decided to let her leave hadn't set well with her.

"I wouldn't call it a danger fetish so much as I just don't like being forced to stay in one place very long. Believe me.

You tagging along wasn't on the menu."

"Hum... I like the way you put that."

She couldn't help the twitch of a smile on her lips. Thank goodness her back was to him. "In your dreams, flyboy."

"Oh, definitely in my dreams."

20

Wanted: White Russian

by Marteeka Karland

"Look, if you don't have anything constructive to contribute, just shut the hell up. We're probably going to die, and I'd like to do so in relative peace."

His soft chuckle vibrated through her insides, settling low in her belly. Damn. Why did he have to be so sexy? He was a dangerous criminal who would probably just as soon kill her as look at her.

Taking a deep breath, Tiressa hit the thrusters for a two-second burst and glided gently into the crackling, colorful gas of the nebula. Colorful swatches of fine dust grazed the hull of the ship, and soon she understood what Dubnikov meant. The ship seemed to be caught up in a current, carrying them straight to the heart of the cloud.

For a long time, she just sat there, glued to the screen.

She had to be ready to nudge the ship away from any densities in the nebula, as those could fry the ship's shield and eat through the hull, the energy was so powerful and volatile.

Once, Tiressa didn't nudge the ship far enough, and her starboard wing grazed a pocket of compressed gas. Sensors blared, and a quick look out the porthole showed her the tip of her wing sparking where the metal had been sheared off the weaker part of the ship, sending them into an arc that was taking them straight toward another pocket of dangerous energy.