Page 110 of Journey to the Forbidden Zone
Carmen blushed again. She’d made the advance, but now that they were rerouting to her quarters, there could be no doubt what would happen.
The memory of Mila taking her in Engineering flashed through her mind again, sultry and dangerous:
Mila traced her fingers across Carmen’s lips, her jaw, down her neck.
“This is mine now. Your body. Your pleasure. Your surrender. All of it belongs to me. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Carmen said, and felt the truth of it settle into her bones. She was marked. Claimed. Owned.
Yes. And after all the insanity she’d endured, Carmen Díaz was ready to fully surrender.
EPILOGUE
The cold was a physical assault.Not the biting chill of space. This was the deep, marrow-freezing cold of utter helplessness. Of being prey.
Nick Corso knelt on the hard, metal deck, with his hands bound by security cuffs in front of him. Two goons – one human, one Collectivist – in black pants, shirts, and boots flanked him on either side. A viewscreen hung on the wall in front of him, and to its left was Julear K’Shaa, the Sensoori who commanded this ship, looking irritated.
That as a good sign. If his request had been denied, if they were just going to execute him, the captain would have been looking smug or gleeful.
He tried to keep his hope to a minimum. It could be extinguished easily, and if he was going to die, he didn’t want to give this asshole the satisfaction of seeing Nick despair.
“Today’s your lucky day, Corso,” the Sensoori said, as though he were trying to form the words around a mouthful of shit. “My employer has elected to grant you your requested audience.”
Without further preamble, before Nick could even think to react, he pressed a button on the wall, and the viewscreen flickered to life. The image that filled it stopped Nick’s heart.
A bloated Sensoori, with faded-blue eyes and a yellow fin, sat in a luxurious chair. His belly was swollen and threatened to drag him out of his seat with its weight. His orange skin was sallow, and the mottling on his neck looked diseased rather than natural. Nick recognized him at once:
It was Ronaal C’Aard, President of the United Planetary Alliance.
Oh, shit. Nick had known that the XenX female’s master was a high-ranking government official. But thehighest-ranking official? The fuckingpresident? Holy hell, Maltese had made an even bigger mess than Nick had believed.
And that bitch, Díaz, kept pouring more fuel on the fire.
“You’re the asshole who lost my Xena,” C’Aard said.
Nick’s eyes went wide. C’Aard was a politician. Nick had expected some sort of throat-clearing introduction, some indication consistent with the gas-bag persona the president always conveyed in public. This was different. This was the direct approach of a cold-blooded criminal.
“Uh, no, sir,” Nick replied, trying to show strength without sounding cocky. “I’m the man who’s been trying tofindher.”
C’Aard appeared unimpressed. He gazed on Nick with bored blue eyes, as if he were wondering why his time was being wasted.
“And yet, you don’t have her,” he said.
“With respect, Mr. President, I would have if your trained attack dogs hadn’t come along. I had the ship she was on in my sights. We were about to disable her, take the Xena from them, and deliver her to you.
“Instead, your Agent K’Shaa evisceratedmyship, murderedmycrew. And the thieves escaped with your property into the Forbidden Zone.”
K’Shaa’s face twisted into a scowl. He looked as though he wanted to blast Nick then and there.
But he did nothing, offered no defense of his actions. Nick supposed he’d already had that conversation with his boss.
“Why are we talking, Mr. Corso?” C’Ard asked. “I told Agent K’Shaa to eliminate everyone who had knowledge of or contact with the Xena. You begged for this meeting. Why?”
“Because you need me, Mr. President.” C’Aard guffawed derisively, but Nick ignored it. “You need me, because I know the woman who has your property. I knowexactlyhow she thinks. Where she’ll go. What she’ll do.”
“I don’t need you to find her, you piece-of-shit pirate,” C’Aard snapped. “We know where she’ll go.”
“No, you don’t,” Nick countered. He injected every ounce of conviction he could muster, leaning into his bluff. “You send your ghost ship in there blind, and the Kovoids will blast it to slag before you get within a lightyear of her. Or Díaz will vanish into some smuggler’s den you’ll never find. She knows the fringes. She knows how to disappear.”