Light of Kaska (7 page)

“S-so just drop me at the nearest spaceport. I can find my way.”

“You seem awful eager to be rid of me, farm girl. Wonder why that is?”

She said nothing.

Stryker twitched a corner of his mouth with dry humor. “You wouldn’t last ten seconds in the outlands by yourself. I know kids who are tougher than you. You might as well hold up a sign that says, ‘Dinner is served.’”

She was quiet while he finished emptying the crate and stowed it away. Then she asked, “What will you do with me?”

He turned to look at her and she dropped her gaze, freckled cheeks tinting the faintest pink.
Eat you for dinner,
his primitive side growled, but he figured she’d leap out into space if he said that aloud. The image of his hands sliding down the tender skin of her open thighs ambushed him again and he drew a swift breath, turning away from her.

Acknowledging the hot rush of blood through his body, he shook his head in bewilderment. This wasn’t gratitude—it was pure lust, on a scale that was all out of proportion to the circumstances and the woman herself. He liked women with more meat on their bones, not little bird-like creatures he could snap in half with one hand. Or bruise without knowing it. She didn’t fit any of the usual criteria that sparked his lust, so what the hell was going on?

“Haven’t figured that out yet,” he answered both of their questions. “You hungry?”

Without waiting for her to answer, he began heating meat pies. A few moments later, he had the steaming pies in containers and filled two drink pouches with water from the ship’s recycling unit.

Sukeza accepted the food and drink with trembling fingers and a wary expression. Stryker pretended not to notice, unfolding a passenger seat from the hull and settling into it. He forked a bite of pastry into his mouth and decided it tasted even better when he wasn’t dehydrated and chained to a wall. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her begin to eat and suppressed the urge stop and stare. Watching her slip anything into her mouth wasn’t going to help subdue that lust.

“I know some people. They might find you safe transport.”

She stopped eating, and he lifted his head to see her staring at him with what looked like surprise. “Y-you mean you’ll let me go?”

He snorted. “What’d you think I was gonna do, keep you as a pet? Or maybe sell you to the highest bidder?”

She flushed and dropped her gaze without answering.

He sighed and continued eating. Of course that’s what she’d thought. He was a known criminal. An escaped convict. He’d broken more laws than he could count. So what was selling off one nervous little female? “Shouldn’t put ideas in my head, farm girl,” he growled with a surge of irritation.

She nearly dropped her food on the floor. He watched her recover the container, watched her shake, and could’ve kicked himself.

“Relax, I wasn’t serious. You should work on your sense of humor.”

“That didn’t sound like humor,” she said in a low voice without looking at him. “That sounded like a threat.”

“When I make a threat, you’ll know it,” he grumbled, shooting her an annoyed glance.

“You mean like, ‘I’ll knock your ass out and drag you?’”

He nearly winced when he remembered that he’d used those very words to shut her up when they were escaping the town. He thought about telling her that he wouldn’t have done it, just gagged and carried her, but reconsidered when he imagined her reaction. So all he said was, “Good example,” and concentrated on finishing his meal.

She was still picking at hers even after he’d taken his last bite, drained the pouch of liquid, cleaned the container, and stowed everything away. He approached the chair and stood with his hands on hips, contemplating her bent head. She went as still as a mouse in a hawk’s shadow.

“Need the chair,” he said as gently as he could. She scrambled out of the seat so fast that he thought she was going to land on her face. He reached out a hand to steady her, but she skittered away from his touch and curled up in the passenger’s seat he’d vacated. Clenching his jaw, he counseled himself to patience, swinging the seat around to face the console and setting the controls for the night. “We’re about ten days out from the nearest ‘port. We’ll tranq it tomorrow and hiber-sleep the rest of the way, but I need a normal night’s rest tonight.”

“Why hiber-sleep? Ten days doesn’t seem like so long.”

“Trust me, in this skinny little cutter, ten days with nothing to do but stare at the hull is an eternity. I’ll be putting her into zero G for the night, so if you want to clean up, I recommend doing it now.”

“Oh, ah…”

Stryker didn’t have to look to know she was staring at the cleanser with doubt all over her face. He curled a corner of his mouth. “Need privacy?”

“If-if that’s possible, I’d be grateful.”

He turned to his left and unlatched the stiff divider—he hadn’t had much occasion to use it so far in his solitary journey. He pulled it along its track until most of the cabin was hidden from view behind the thin, gray screen. “It ain’t perfect, but it’s all we got.”

“Thank you,” she responded and though he could no longer see her, he could hear the genuine gratitude in her voice. He could also hear every move she made. He busied himself with plotting evasive courses in case the Collectors came sniffing around, but the sounds behind him created an evolving picture in his head. Cleaning and stowing the foodware. Unpacking her duffel. Repacking her duffel. Stripping off her clothes…

He gritted his teeth and tried to think of anything else besides her slim body becoming tantalizingly naked in such close proximity. He thought about star charts and Collectors, but his body reacted anyway, heart thudding and erection straining against his clothes.
Stupid.
All this for a slip of a woman who winced from his slightest touch. She might think the worst of him, but besides not being a baby killer, he was also not a rapist.

He listened to the cleanser rustle over her, listened while she went through her private rituals of cleaning and preparing for sleep. He was so attuned to her that by the time she was finished, he heard her draw breath to speak.

“I’m done, thank you,” she called softly.

Without comment, he pushed the divider back into place and latched it.

“I-I should probably look at your wrists,” she offered.

Stryker considered it briefly. She might be less skittish if she had the experience of being close without him pouncing—but then he remembered the petting. “No,” he responded with a bit more force than was necessary. Taking a careful breath and modifying his tone, he repeated, “No, it’s fine.” In his current condition, her touching him was a very bad idea.

Confirming that the controls were set, he shut down the grav drive. With a gentle push and twist, he floated up from the seat and turned to face her. Her mouth was rounded in a silent gasp of dismay while she scrabbled for purchase.

“Hang on, stop swinging your arms around,” he said with a suppressed grin. He pushed off the consol and headed her way, catching the bulkhead and steadying her with the ease of long practice in zero G.

“It’s been a long time,” she said, voice a little breathless and eyes downcast. “And I never was very good at Z-grav.”

“It’s like riding a hawker. Once you learn, you never forget how.”

“Riding a what?” she asked, raising her gaze to his with a bemused frown.

“A hawker. You know, a hover sled. You get ‘em as a kid and smash ‘em into things until you figure out how to move with it…” He trailed off when she shook her head. “You never had a hawker?”

Her mouth curled on one side as if she was fighting a smile. “Don’t sound so scandalized. Kaska isn’t the biggest tech world in the galaxy, you know.”

“Yeah, but every kid should have a hawker. Damn, that’s just child abuse.”

Stryker was very aware that she hadn’t pulled away from him, her legs bumping into his while she drifted in the nil gravity. The conversation had distracted her from her fear and he wanted to keep her distracted as long as possible. He was enjoying her closeness, enjoying the amusement on her face. She was lovely in this light, or had he just not noticed how pretty she was before? And she still smelled inexplicably of sunshine. He had a sudden, strong urge to see a smile on her face, to hear her laugh and taste it on her lips.

Instead, she snorted and raised a hand to the bulkhead, turning her body in cautious experimentation. To his keen disappointment, she moved away from his grip. “So I was deprived as a child. Why do you do Z-grav anyway? Seems inconvenient.” She had that focused look on her face again, her actions careful but deliberate while she practiced moving around.

“You see any beds in this little cutter? Why get kinks and sores in those chairs when you can float through the night? You look like you’re dressed for an ice nebula,” he couldn’t resist commenting.

She had thick socks on her feet, flannel-like slacks and top, covered by the same heavy sweater she’d been wearing when she left her house. “Space travel makes me cold,” she answered in an absent tone, drifting further away from him.

Stryker followed, drawn to her for reasons he could not understand or explain. She wasn’t afraid. She smelled like sunshine. She’d put her hair up again. Her whole body was hidden except the nape of her neck and her hands. He remembered the feel of her fingers in his hair and took a deep breath, hungry in a way that was alien to him. With a disturbing amount of effort, he refrained from offering to warm her. “The wrap ought to keep you warm, if those bastards didn’t strip ‘em out of here.”

She cast a questioning look over her shoulder and seemed to notice how close he was. Her eyes widened and her whole body twitched. She turned a little too fast, losing control of her body axis in the process.

The fear was back.

Instead of assisting her, Stryker moved away with a casual kick to the hull, drifting across the small space to the other side of the ship. There he touched a camouflaged panel that disgorged a wealth of shimmering cloth. With sour satisfaction, he pulled the wraps free and stretched them out, anchoring the first to one side of the hull, then drifting across to anchor the second to the other side of the ship. Without looking at Sukeza, he said, “This stuff clings to itself, so you just wrap it around you and you’re good to go for the night.”

Following actions with words, he moved to the wrap furthest from her and secured it around himself. Touching the control panel close to him, he dimmed the lights and closed his eyes with grim determination. He needed the sleep, but he had a sinking feeling that his little passenger wasn’t going to make it easy.

Chapter 4

Sukeza tried not to stare at him. She was exhausted and emotionally drained, not having slept the night before due to the murders, tending to Stockton’s animals, and following up on evidence that others had ignored. But her brain was too wired to let her sleep. Just that morning she’d been standing outside Stryker’s jail room, afraid to step through the door because of where it might lead her. It had led her away from everything she’d known for the past five years, to the black of space and the company of a convicted criminal.

She slanted him a quick glance and looked away just as swiftly. In the dimness, she couldn’t tell if his eyes were closed. Her skin prickled as if he was watching her, but for all she knew, he was out cold. Unlike her cocooned form, he had wrapped himself loosely from mid-torso down, arms drifting free. His hair was also drifting, a strange, dark corona around his head.

What was she going to do? Was he telling the truth about trying to get her safe transport? Could she trust him to do as he said or should she be plotting her own escape from him the first chance she got? Neither choice sounded good—it would be stupid to trust him implicitly even though he hadn’t lied to her so far as she knew, but going off on her own would be, as he’d pointed out, incredibly dangerous. Was there a third option? If there was, her tired brain couldn’t find it.

She snuck another quick look at him despite her best intentions. It was hard to resist the temptation to watch him, not just because it was prudent to keep an eye on any dangerous predator, but because he was still so beautiful to her, even more now than when they’d first met. Thoughts of their various interactions played through her mind along with the stark, vivid image of his naked body. He’d been just as formidable and beautiful without clothes as he was fully dressed. The breath left her body on a silent sigh. The Goddess who had made him must have loved her creation dearly. All those thick muscles and sleek cinnamon skin, body moving with controlled power and masculine grace, chest dusted with dark hair that thinned to a line down his hard muscled abdomen. And even unaroused, his sex had been as daunting as the rest of him.

Sukeza took a deep, fortifying breath and let it out again. Beautiful all over, right down to his toes. Yes, the Goddess had loved him well. While she closed her eyes and indulged in the beguiling memory, sleep stole over her like a thief, unraveling her consciousness in furtive degree.

Sukeza woke with a start, her body twisting at the line that attached her to the hull. Bits of dream followed her into reality, a strange mix of hostile accusers and hungry beasts. Staring around the cabin in vague disorientation, she twitched again at the sight of Stryker. He was still drifting in apparent sleep, an arm flung up to hover over his eyes, but the wrap had been shoved to his waist and his shirt was missing. He obviously was not feeling her space chill. Less wary in the aftermath of slumber, she took a moment to admire the bare-chested display.

Then full memory of the day before washed over her and she closed her eyes against the strain of conflicting emotions. She hadn’t thought of the place as home—for her, there could be no home but Kaska—but she had thought of those people as her friends.
Some friends.
They had done their damnedest to kill her, not to mention accusing and sentencing an innocent man, and if Stryker was right, harboring a child murderer. Were they all insane?

She opened her eyes again and shook her head against the sting of bewildered, frightened tears. Dwelling on it would not help her out of the current situation. But she needed to learn from it, to learn how to be more wary and less naïve.