Page 173 of Pets in Space 10

“Come to my room with me and we can do more than stare at one another across a crowded room.”

Kari gaped at the stranger who’d approached her at the bar and stopped next to her seat. “Really? Just like that?!”

Granted, she’d been noticeably eyeballing him from across the rowdy establishment for the last twenty minutes. It was hard not to stare at the fine figure he cut in his slouch against the wall. She just hadn’t imagined him coming over and actually speaking to her.

“Yes,” he said with a smug grin, leaning a muscled forearm on the bar top and angling his dark head closer to speak. “I thought we could mutually satisfy our curiosity about one another.”

Flushing, she eyed her drink in the short square glass and wondered if she’d consumed more alcohol than she realized. Then again, she had a strong tolerance and even if she was sheets to the wind, it was still hard to mistake someone blatantly asking to take you to bed for sex.

Which left only one explanation.

“Is this a prank? Who put you up to it? Iloku? Jinx? Bezin? Havoc?”

Her teammates loved a good joke and this would be just like them to set her up. Once she entered the stranger’s room, they’d pop out from a closet and laugh in her face for being gullible.

When did they have time to do this? How did they find someone so fast? They’d only arrived on the military station this morning.

Dark hair fell over the stranger’s broad forehead as he shook his head, drawing attention to his deep green eyes. Tiny lines radiated from the corners implying an ease with humor. He huffed a breath and her gaze fell to his full lips as he spoke. “No prank and I don’t know those names.”

She gestured a hand in a negligent wave over her torso and distinctive olive green uniform.

His smoldering gaze followed the movement and she almost lost her train of thought.

“Riiight. So, you randomly decided to approach a female officer of the United Space Fleet and proposition her? Not buying it.”

He grinned, flashing white teeth with the slightest curve to the canines on the sides. Hmmm, not full human. “I assure you this is not a joke or an attempt to trick someone from the USF.”

There wasn’t enough alcohol in a spaceport for her to entertain this…whatever this was. She blew out a breath, pushed her drink away and straightened on the bar stool. “Listen, in short, the answer is no.”

Regretfully, woefully, no.

Despite his close proximity, she slid off her seat and shifted to go around him.

Instead of moving out of her way, he sighed and lowered his head close enough their temples brushed.

“That’s very…unfortunate to hear. I’d hoped you’d at least be agreeable enough to go to my room.

You’re smarter than I was warned. I’m sorry about that, Lieutenant Ma’are. Sorry for the both of us.”

She tensed, belatedly sensing the danger. He’d used her name. “Who are you?”

True remorse glinted from those green orbs as he continued, “I have the feeling I would have liked getting to know you in and out of the bedroom.”

Her brows lowered and she prepared to shove him aside when something sharp pierced her left arm. She glanced down only to have the room around her spin. Strong hands clasped her waist, catching her before she fell.

“Wh—wh?” Her lips grew numb as her words slurred. Why was her vision blurring?

“It’s alright,” the stranger said in a louder voice. “She had too much to drink. I’m taking her back to our room.”

Jovial laughter met her ears and commiserating sounds.

Nooo. Wait. They weren’t together. She tried to raise her hand in protest but it flopped down along her side.

An arm slid beneath her knees and lifted her off her feet. Her head fell back against a solid shoulder, then everything went dark.

***

Luka hid his distaste as he carried the unconscious lieutenant from the bar to the waiting hover car at the end of the alley behind the space station. The door on the passenger side slid up quietly, allowing him to ease the female into the back before taking the jumper seat upfront.

“Did you get her?” his brother, Zair, asked with an anxious glance at the back before pulling off.

“Obviously.” Drawing a deep breath and letting it out slowly, Luka ran a hand through his hair before gripping the back of his neck. “This is fucked, Zair. She’s a fleet officer.”

His brother slammed a palm on the steering handle twice as the hover car picked up speed, zooming down the empty streets. “I know, I know, alright. This is on me. I’m just glad you agreed to help.”

Help. Luka snorted. He’d been forced to kidnap a soldier from a bar on a military space station. If caught, they each were looking at ten years on a penal planet.

He tossed a look at the slumped form of the woman. Her blonde streaked hair covered her face but he remembered it clearly. The pert nose, the humor glinting in her brown gaze when he’d first spoken. Not to mention the curved body in the drab USF uniform.

She was gorgeous and clearly important to someone. Someone desperate enough to request abducting a woman from a public place. A rare spurt of guilt pierced his thoughts. He wasn’t a good guy. Far from it, but this was a new low even for him and that was saying something.

“What do they want with her anyway?”

Zair shrugged and Luka bit off a pissed growl. His brother’s attitude was too lackadaisical in the face of the crime they’d committed. A crime Luka had perpetuated on his brother’s behalf.

When Zair had come to him distraught and begging for help, he’d initially refused. There was always something with his brother and Luka had pulled him out of the fire so many times he’d lost count.

Over the last three years, he’d ignored his brother’s schemes and poor decisions. He had his own criminal enterprise to run and rescuing Zair had grown old a long time ago.

Then, two nights ago, his brother had come to him battered and begging. If he didn’t do this one job, his life was forfeit. No matter how many times he’d been warned, Zair had gone and put himself in debt to the Rudurian Syndicate, a rival group to Luka’s.

If Luka stepped in under his official capacity as the leader of the Atoro Syndicate, it would be an out and out declaration of war between the two.

As it stood, the peace treaty he’d brokered was one inciting incident away from ending at any moment.

He’d worked too hard, lost too many men to go back to the way it was when he’d chosen this path.

Fuuuck. He didn’t need this. Facing forward, he scanned the area. “Go through it with me again. You drop her off, they erase your debt, we walk away, right?”

He glimpsed a slight flinch from the left. Turning to Zair, Luka snapped, “Don’t play with me, little brother. Now is not the time.”

“Yeah, bro. That’s what they told me.” Zair licked his lips, a sure sign of nerves.

He flicked a glance in Luka’s direction as the hover car slowed and cruised to a stop in front of a single story building on the edge of the boundary line for the USF’s territory for Station Orion.

Beyond it was nomad territory. “Would it be so bad to have a meet with Gubu?”

Slowly and carefully, Luka spoke in a way his brother couldn’t misunderstand. “I will never work with the Rudurian Syndicate. Have you forgotten what they did to our mother?”

Even in the dim interior of the vehicle, he noticed Zair’s throat bobble. “That was years ago, Luka. An accident.”

His arm flashed out with a quickness, locking his brother’s throat in tight grip as he dragged him over the console and to his face.

“An accident?! Twelve years ago, Gubu shot our mother in the face when she refused to be his whore after the death of our father. I fought for three years to gain control of the Atoro to avenge her. I swear if you fuck me over in this, we’re done. Done!”

Zair held his hands palm up. “I wouldn’t do that, Luka.”

He wanted to believe him, wanted to believe the little brother he’d taken care of after the loss of their parents wouldn’t lie to him but time and history put his belief on shaky ground.