SurrendersMischief

Surrender’s Mischief

Alvania
Scarborough

Darias, Supreme Chief of Nexar, is
tired. When the offworlder crashes on his planet, he takes her as slave, hoping
to gain some respite in her sleek, sexy body. Instead he finds himself
confronted by a woman whose tongue is as sharp as his blade. Worse, her
outrageous beliefs on the roles of females are spreading, causing unrest among
both sexes and damaging his tenuous control over an already unsettled populace.
It’s time to tame his fiery captive. Darias demands her complete obedience.

But Riana demands his surrender. An
independent trader with her pick of handsome, accomplished lovers, Riana has
the sector by the tail until her cargo ship is caught in a fierce ion storm and
crashes on a planet filled with barbarians. Taken slave, she gets a crash
course in living life without her most precious possession—her freedom. Used to
getting herself out of tight situations, Riana won’t go down without a battle.
The too-sexy warrior is about to have the tables turned on him.

The battle of the sexes just took a
twist.

Chapter One

“The Void. Ships stray in, never to return,” Riana intoned
in a dark, melodramatic voice, and then ruined it when she snorted. “A lot of
rot if you ask me. Rumors, lies and innuendos planted by some unscrupulous
trader to keep others out of the area.” And she should know—she made her living
by ignoring such warnings. As an independent trader, she didn’t have the
lucrative contracts of the fleets, but by catering to a specialized niche, she
kept body and soul together, and her ship
Midnight Mischief
outfitted
with the latest technology that allowed her to avoid detection by pirates and
local excisemen alike.

“So you keep saying.” On the vidscreen, her best friend
Sharri looked skeptical.

“Well, it’s about time you listened to me.” Riana grinned as
she drummed her fingers on the console and leaned back in her chair.

“Like I listened to you that time we visited the pleasure
planet Oras?”

“Phfff.” Riana dismissed Sharri’s question with an airy wave
of her hand. “So I made a little miscalculation. We got out of there with no
harm done, didn’t we?”

“If you call leaving naked, three jumps ahead of one very
angry officer, no harm done, then I guess you could say so.”

“She had no reason to issue that warrant for my arrest.”

Sharri lifted one perfectly arched brow. “You were caught in
a compromising position with her favorite lieutenant,” Sharri reminded her.
“The woman had her eye on him and you swooped in and stole him from under her
very nose.”

“He was showing me a hand-to-hand combat technique,” Riana
sniffed, her chin raised.

“Uh-huh. As I recall, you were touching the lieutenant with
more than just your hand.”

Riana couldn’t keep up the indignant act and started
laughing. “You should have seen her face. I don’t know which she wanted more,
to glare at me or stare at the good lieutenant’s very fine, very visible
assets.”

“Seriously, Riana, I worry about you. You can’t keep hopping
from planet to planet, searching for some mythical paradise. It’s going to land
you in serious trouble one day.”

“I promise not to go out of my way to look for trouble.”
Riana drew an X over her chest and tried for a reassuring smile, but the frown
knitting her friend’s brow didn’t go away.

“The problem is you don’t have to look for trouble, it just
seems to find you.”

“Relax. You worry too much. My gut instinct tells me that
this is going to be my most profitable trip yet.”

“Your gut instinct is going to get you knee-deep into some
major shit.”

“Trust me.” Riana leaned forward and tapped a key, ending
the communication. Propping her elbows on the console, she stared at the blank
vidscreen. Sharri worried too much. Already this trip had been extremely
profitable. She had half-a-dozen trade contracts safely stored on data node,
and several new products residing in the hold. Best of all, she’d managed to
trade for a map of the Forbidden Sector, better known as the Void, nearly six
weeks ago.

Rumors and legends abounded about the Void. Reputedly, any
ship that entered its boundaries never came out. Lost forever. Never to be
heard from again. Gone. Poof.

Snakebird pucky.

The ships either got caught in the ferocious storms that her
sensors could pick up from almost half a parsec away or found some of the
fabled planets hinted at in ancient texts and kept their mouths shut. Planets
where treasure was supposed to drip from the trees like drops of rain.

Not that she believed in the tales of treasure.

Exactly.

One had to wonder though. Riana slid a slender volume bound
in real leather toward her. She opened it to the middle, handling the fragile
pages with reverence, until she came across the now-familiar, intricately
detailed drawing of a dragon, its wings an iridescent wash of color, the body
done in faded tones of jewel colors.

She loved old books, the kind she could hold in her hands,
could smell the scent of paper and leather, could feel. Riana brushed her
finger over the drawing. She still couldn’t believe that a map of the Void was
in a centuries-old book of erotic romance.

Did Mia Gorganos, a shrewd trader in her own right, have
even the slightest idea of what she had sold her?

Somehow, Riana doubted it. The woman would have held her up
for a fortune if she had.

Riana settled back in her chair, determined that this time
she would unlock all of the dragon’s secrets. Despite her familiarity with a
number of the sector’s written languages, a real bonus for a trader when
dealing with the often archaic rituals some planets demanded, it had taken her
weeks to get a handle on the language used in the book. Even with the use of
her state-of-the-art, customized ship’s computer. The most puzzling aspect had
been the similarity to several disparate worlds’ root languages. Did that mean
that those planets were not the original homes of their races? Many millennia
ago had they shared a common ancestral planet?

The possibility intrigued her. Perhaps when she finished
this trade mission she’d take a break and do a little xeno-archeology. If she
asked nicely, maybe Trenth from Greida IV would go with her. The handsome
archeologist had a number of talents besides archeology that would make the
long hours of travel pass quickly. A reminiscent smile tugged at her lips.

Okay, enough of that. Right now she needed to concentrate on
the mystery in front of her.

Hours later, just as she was once again ready to admit
defeat, one detail on the star map stood out. The same small anomaly she’d
stared at a hundred times before. With one finger, she canted the left bottom
corner down a fraction.

Her heart began to pound. Unable to believe her eyes, she
compared what was on the monitor to the dragon map again. Then a third time.
Her heartbeat became a drum in her ears.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

If her calculations were correct, she was only two weeks
from the nearest planetary system depicted in the illustration.

Riana closed her eyes. She’d done it. She was the first
trader in—hell, she didn’t know how long—to successfully navigate the Forbidden
Sector. Let Sharri say “I told you so” now.

Somehow, though, the victory fell flat.

Riana closed the book and stretched to ease her aching back
muscles.

Was Sharri right? Was she searching for paradise?

Had she really spent the last ten years going from one
planetary system to another searching for something that didn’t even exist? Was
her restlessness, her inability to stay in one place more than a sennight, her
constant yen to find new excitement, nothing more than a convenient excuse to
avoid recognizing her discontent?

Riana tapped her thumbnail on her bottom lip, considering
the possibility.

Perhaps there was a grain of truth in what Sharri said.
Maybe she
was
looking for something, but she’d be willing to bet her new
trade contracts that it wasn’t paradise. No, if she were honest with herself,
she’d admit she was looking for something much more elusive than that…

She was looking for a place to belong.

A shrill alarm jarred Riana out of her uneasy musings. Her
ship shuddered. Nearly thrown out of her chair, she desperately reached to
disengage the autopilot. Before her fingers could key the command, the gravity
cut out, throwing her violently against the bulkhead.

* * * * *

“Surrender.”

A deep voice murmured the command in Riana’s ear as hard
hands wrapped leather manacles around her wrists. Groggy, disoriented from the
crash of her sleek, small ship, the word was slow to penetrate. When it did,
pure instinct took over. She slammed her knee upward, catching the man beside
her on the side of the head.

He grunted, his fingers slipping from the buckle on the
manacle.

Riana scrambled to her feet, ignoring the burning pain in
her knee. Swinging her hand in a downward, backhanded fist, she caught the man
just below the temple, rocking him back on his heels. Not giving him a chance
to recover, she pivoted on one leg, the heel of her other foot aimed with
deadly precision for the leather-clad warrior’s throat.

She might have succeeded if the ship hadn’t shifted without
warning.

Riana lost her balance and landed heavily on the floor. The
breath knocked out of her, she couldn’t summon the necessary strength to fight
when he covered her body with his.

The metallic studs on his gauntlet bit painfully into her
breastbone, and his hand circled her throat, the threat obvious—cooperate or be
choked. Long silky hair, as dark as his expression, brushed her cheek, the side
of her neck. His scent, hot, exotic and all male, enveloped her.

Riana shivered.

His forearm slid up slightly. Her breath caught in her
throat as her eyes met his. She had just enough time to realize his eyes were
the color of antique gold before she felt a round, metallic object just below
her ear, a jolt of pain and then nothing.

* * * * *

She awoke cold, so cold. Wind whipped by her body, hitting
with stunning force between her parted legs.

What the—?

She was naked!

In a reflex reaction, she jerked her wrists up to cover
herself. They wouldn’t move. Panic clogged her throat and she went lightheaded.
That scared her even more. Mustn’t panic. She took several deep breaths.
Slowly, bits and pieces of the storm, the crash and the huge warrior who
demanded her surrender returned until she remembered everything.

She almost wished she hadn’t.

Then she chided her momentary cowardice. She’d been in worse
predicaments and survived. Like the time the pirates along the Ivory Lane tried
to steal her cargo. Not one item in her hold had been lost. So what if she had
a few—all right, several—scars as a permanent trophy? She’d won.

The reminder calmed her. Okay, she was tied to an aircycle.
A state-of-the-art aircycle. She breathed a tiny sigh of relief. At least she
wasn’t stranded on some backwater planet without the means to contact Sharri. Even
if she couldn’t return to her ship right away, she’d have a chance at accessing
a comm device.

Her lips thinned.

Damn ion storm. It came from out of nowhere, throwing all of
Midnight Mischief
’s systems into overload. Her throat tightened at the
thought of her baby damaged, perhaps beyond repair.

No, she mustn’t think that way. Escape. Concentrate on
escaping.

Riana tilted her head back, trying to find a familiar
pattern in the stars. A lump settled into her stomach. Everything looked
strange, distorted. She must have hit her head even harder than she’d thought.
She blinked to clear her gaze. Nope, no change. She concentrated harder. Come
on, damn it, she needed a reference star so Sharri could come save her ass.
She’d even willingly put up with the other woman’s teasing if it meant getting
back into space with her ship. And, from the severity of the storm, at the very
least she’d need a tow for
Mischief
. As good a ship as she was, escape
without her being spaceworthy was about as good as teats on a boar, as her
great-granddaddy used to say. Though she didn’t have the faintest clue what a
boar was.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.

All she got for her effort was a renewed pounding in her
skull. Still, she refused to give up. Just one, she coaxed mentally, just one
reference star. It took a full five breaths before realization dawned. She
didn’t recognize
any
of the stars, and she was too good a pilot not to
take note of navigation stars. Either that meant the crash so rattled her wits
she didn’t know axis from azimuth or…

She was in an entirely different sector.

Talk about being knee-deep in major shit.

For a sec, Riana swore she heard Sharri’s laugh.

She shut it out, along with the pounding in her head, and
tried to take stock of her surroundings. Dark silhouettes of trees flew by her,
but she couldn’t make out any distinct details. Hell, she could walk this very
path once the sun was up and wouldn’t recognize a single thing. Not one. She
might as well be blindfolded, as much good as sight was doing her. A fact her
captor must be aware of.

There was a minute change in the aircycle’s inclination.
Someone not intimately attuned to the roll of a ship that artificial gravity
never seemed to quite eliminate, would have never noticed.

Riana noticed.

The ’cycle leveled out and stayed that way. Instead of dark
skeletal shadows, there was a sense of openness. Desert or plains, she thought
as she caught the distinct scent of dust and dryness. It wasn’t any lighter,
just not as intensely black. She closed her eyes, conserving her strength for
wherever he was taking her. He’d have to release her to get her off the ’cycle
and then she’d—

Her eyes flew open.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she choked out,
only to have the force of her rage ruined by chattering teeth. “Let me go!” She
tugged at her bonds, but this time her captor had taken more care in securing
her. Not only were her ankles bound to the ’cycle’s struts, but her arms were
pulled back and fastened behind her captor’s hips, snugging her in tight
against the vee of his thighs.

Then an awful thought struck her. What if the blow to her
head had managed to damage the neurotranslator? What if the pain in her head
was from more than the blow? She’d be stuck on this world without a way to
communicate.

Without a way to tell this ass just what she thought of him.

“Do not take that tone with me or punishment will be much
worse.”

“Punishment? What punishment? I haven’t done anything
wrong,” she grated, twisting her wrists even though she knew she couldn’t get
free. Zethra save her, she’d fallen into the hands of a barbarian.