Rescuing Rory

Rescuing Rory

N.J. Walters

Betrayed after her father’s death, Rory Banks finds herself dancing on the
Exos
, a deep-space pleasure ship, with no way out of her nightmare. It’s a far cry from earning her keep as a mechanic on her father’s ship. Time is running out and within days she will be consigned to the pleasure rooms on board. So when a stranger breaks open her cage and offers her a way out, she grabs it and runs.

Kal Marks and his brothers are space mercenaries and traders who have spent the past ten years searching for their younger sister. Their hunt has led them to the
Exos
and Rory, who they hope will have information. Once Rory’s told them all she knows they plan to let her go. But Kal never counted on wanting Rory or the sexual tension and scorching heat that blazes between them. What starts out as a simple mission soon become something much more complicated.

A Romantica®
futuristic erotic romance
from Ellora’s Cave

R
ESCUING
R
ORY

N.J. Walters

Dedication

Thank you to Ellora’s Cave for taking a chance on me all those years ago. And thank you to Pamela Cohen, Mary Altman, Raelene Gorlinsky and Shannon Combs. You’re amazing editors and women, and I’ve learned so much from all of you.

*DPGROUP.ORG*

Chapter One

“This is going to be a major clusterfuck. There’s no quiet way to do this.”

Even though his brother’s thoughts echoed his own, Kal Marks didn’t spare Garth so much as a glance. No, his gaze locked solidly on the woman currently dancing in one of the gilded cages that hung from the ceiling here in the largest club on the pleasure ship
Exos
. The flashing blue spotlight made her smooth white skin appear the same color, giving her an exotic appearance.

Her long blonde hair hung down her chest, covering her breasts, much to the dismay of the customers around her and the skimpy thong barely covered her mound as she dipped and swayed to the pounding music. If anything, the tiny strip of cloth accentuated her nakedness, which was no doubt its purpose. She didn’t look at any of the patrons, keeping her eyes trained on the far wall.

“Are you listening to me?” Garth asked, practically yelling to be heard over the noise. Impatience tinged his voice.

Kal forced himself to turn away and focus on his brother. “I hear you but we don’t have a choice.” They had to talk to the woman, the dancing vision.

“You sure the information is good?”

Now that was a question, wasn’t it? Digger wasn’t exactly known for his honesty but he traded in information and he knew the Marks brothers were always buying when it came to intel on the whereabouts of their missing sister. He also knew better than to lie to them.

“Digger is too scared of Flynn to risk feeding us bad info,” Kal pointed out. Flynn was the oldest of the four brothers, massively tall and mean as a snake. The only people Flynn cared about were his brothers and sister.

Cross one of the Marks brothers and you crossed them all.

“I still don’t like it,” Garth muttered.

“Noted.” Kal let his gaze drift over the room, observing the positions of all the guards. There were quite a few of them as things could get rowdy on the
Exos
. In fact, Kal counted on just that.

The music pumping through the sound system was low and rhythmic. That, combined with the mostly naked women dancing around them, was designed to get men in the mood so they’d pay the money to visit the back rooms where women waited to service them. This far out in space the floating pleasure ship contained the only women many of these men would see for months.

Kal looked at his brother and noted his scowl. Garth’s thoughts mirrored his own. What if their sister were aboard a ship like this? Most of the women weren’t here by choice. Usually the brothers would never set foot on a ship like the
Exos
but when it came to intel about their sister they’d go straight into the bowels of hell itself.

“She’s got the tattoo Digger told us about.” Garth studied the dancer now, his gaze tracing the long length of her legs. Kal was filled with the sudden urge to punch his brother in the face.

He rolled his shoulders, forced himself to lean back in his chair and act as if he were enjoying the show. And it wasn’t much of an act. The woman wasn’t really dancing, more sensually undulating to a rhythm far different from the music filling the room. He caught his breath when her hair slid to the side, exposing one perfectly shaped plump breast for a split second before her hair covered it again.

Kal’s dick sprang to life and he shifted to get more comfortable. No doubt about it, she was beautiful. There was something almost…innocent about her. Yeah, that was it. Impossible considering where she was. No one aboard this floating pleasure barge was innocent.

He fought to bring his body under control, feeling like a jerk for getting aroused. He knew a good percentage of the women here had been bought from slavers. His fingers tightened into fists. There was nothing he hated more than slavers. Those low-life bastards all deserved to be shot out into deep space without a protective suit.

If he could, he’d rescue all the women here. That just wasn’t possible but he could rescue one. Kal let his gaze drift above her right arm. The tattoo on the woman was an unusual one, a stylized pattern of flowers that covered her left shoulder and ran all the way down her arm to her hand. There was no missing it. At the bottom, a thorny vine wrapped around her wrist. Exactly as Digger had described.

“So how are we doing this?” Garth asked.

Kal rubbed a hand across his scruffy chin. He hadn’t bothered shaving in a few days and it added to his disreputable appearance. The jagged scar on his left cheek didn’t hurt either. Both he and his brother were wearing the drab shirt and pants that labeled them as laborers from the planet below. But beneath them, both of them wore battlesuits, body armor that was practically indestructible while being totally lightweight. That kind of protection didn’t come cheap but all the brothers owned a suit.

“You create a diversion and I’ll get the girl. As soon as I’ve got her, we make a run for the ship.” It wasn’t much of a plan but Kal and his brother had worked with worse.

Garth stood and hitched up his pants. At six-one, he was the shortest of the brothers but he was the widest, and not because there was an ounce of fat on him anywhere. No, Garth was built like a bull, thick and muscular, and always ready for a fight.

“One diversion coming up,” he promised. He swiped up his drink and weaved his way toward a table filled with miners. They were a rough lot and were known not to tolerate outsiders.

Kal shook his head. His brother was crazy. But then again, the same could be said about all of them. Garth pretended to be drunk when Kal knew he hadn’t so much as taken a sip of his drink. Neither of them had. No telling what was in the rotgut they served aboard this ship.

Garth was almost on top of the men now. “Harcon, old buddy. Haven’t seen you for a while.” He held his arms wide open as if he were going to hug one of the men.

“Piss off,” the man growled. “You got the wrong guy.”

Kal stood and slowly began to meander toward the cage containing the woman they needed to talk with. He didn’t hear the next thing the miner said to his brother but he heard Garth’s reply.

“No need to be so unfriendly.” Garth waved his arms wide and spilled his drink over two of the other men seated at the table. “Whoops. Sorry about that.”

Kal bit his bottom lip to keep from smiling. Garth was enjoying himself just a little too much. Kal was right next to the cage when one of the miners slammed his fist into Garth’s jaw. Kal winced and not for his brother. It was well-known that Garth’s jaw was as hard as granite. The blow didn’t even knock his brother back an inch. Instead Garth shook his head, roared his displeasure and rammed his fist into the miner’s gut. The man dropped like a stone and the fight was on.

The guards hurried toward the combatants before things got too out of hand. Kal turned his attention to the woman in the cage. Like the rest of the crowd, she watched the fight.

He reached into his pocket and withdrew a thin metal box, attaching it to the lock. The device ran through the sequence of possible combinations faster than the speed of light. In ten seconds flat, he had the door to the gilded cage open.

The woman gasped and jerked away from him when his hand touched her calf. Her amazing blue eyes widened when she realized the door to her prison was open. “If you want to get away from here, come with me.” Kal gave a quick look over his shoulder, wincing when Garth picked up a man and launched him at another table. This was quickly getting ugly. “Make up your mind. We’ve got to go. Now.”

Not that he was going to give her any choice in the matter but it would be easier if she came of her own free will.

Aurora Banks had seen just about everything in her twenty-two years of living, and most of it wasn’t pretty. But this was the last thing she’d expected to happen when she was shoved into the dancing cage a few hours ago.

The man standing before her with his hand out was tall and broad and downright intimidating. His eyes were a piercing green and his silky black hair fell around his shoulders. A thick scar ran from just below his eye by his nose all the way out to his ear.

If she were totally honest, he was handsome in a rough-looking way. Not that it mattered. He was a way out of this nightmare. Rory only hoped she wasn’t jumping from one bad situation to an even worse one.

Trusting her instincts, she reached out and took his hand. It was warm and strong as it closed around hers and pulled her to the edge of the cage. He lifted her down from her gilded prison, wrapped one strong arm around her and hustled her toward the wide red door that blocked their path to freedom.

“The guards.” She had to yell to be heard above the din of the yelling and fighting. They called themselves bouncers but they were here to do more than keep the peace. Their main job was to make sure they didn’t lose any of the merchandise or the money. And all the women on board were considered prime merchandise.

“You let me worry about them.” Her liberator reached inside his shirt and drew out a compact-sized blaster.

Something crashed behind her and she automatically began to look toward it. He caught her chin and turned her face away. “Look forward, not back.”

That was good advice. She ignored the noise and the men looking at them and hurried with him.

One man, a Crebian by the looks of his greenish-blue skin, tried to stop them. The man beside her didn’t even pause. He simply raised his hand and shot the blaster. The Crebian fell to the floor and the men around him stepped back, giving them a wide berth.

Rory didn’t know how he’d managed to get the weapon on board the
Exos
, as there were stringent controls in place to keep such a thing from happening. She should know, she’d spent the past month trying to find a weak spot in their security system so she could plan her escape.

They pushed their way through the door. The man beside her tightened his grip on her wrist. His urgency became hers. “Run,” he told her. Giving no thought to the mistake she could be making, Rory ran, her bare feet slapping against the metal floor as she was practically dragged behind him.

“We’re coming in hot.”

At first she thought he was talking to her. It took her a moment to realize he was speaking into a communication device strapped to his wrist. And it wasn’t just any communication device. This one was top-of-the-line and went for at least one thousand Alliance credits, maybe more.

Who was this guy? Laborers and miners didn’t waste their hard-earned money on fancy communication devices. They tended to splurge on booze and women when they had a few extra credits.