The manager’s thick eyebrows rose. “Gonna cost you.”

“Give her what she wants.” Kell’s voice edged with the possibility of violence if he wasn’t obeyed.

She shivered with awareness.

The manager gulped. “For the night, or by the hour?”

“The night.” Her words were heavy, ripe with possibility. She resisted looking at Kell, knowing that if she did, he’d read her intent plainly. Too plainly. Her desire for him scared her a little. She couldn’t remember being so hungry for a particular man, and she wondered if that meant she was weak or vulnerable. Both qualities she tried to avoid.

The manager finished checking them in, not without receiving a substantial deposit first. He slid the key chip across the battered counter, and she scooped it up.

“Take the lift to the top.” He smirked again. “Nuptial Suite.”

As if anyone on Ryge ever made the mate commitment. Maybe some had multiple wives or husbands. That seemed more likely.

The room itself wasn’t palatial, despite its grand name. Kell prowled it, studying everything.

Someone, presumably not the manager, had make token gestures toward decoration, with wide swaths of warm-hued silks hanging on the walls and from the ceiling. Suspended lamps in jewel tones cast flickering light, illuminated by simucandles that turned on when they entered the room. Neither she nor Kell missed the enormous bed that took up most of the room. She turned away from it to continue her examination of the suite. True to the manager’s word, the hygiene chamber had an actual water shower. Definitely worth the expense.

“Why—” Kell began, but stopped when she held up a hand.

She moved toward a ventilation grate. “I suppose this room will do. Don’t forget to turn down the bed the way I like. I’ll want extra pillows.” She spoke loudly as she removed the grate. Inside the ventilation shaft, she found exactly what she expected, and held it up to show him.

He scowled at the tiny surveillance bot. “Yes, Mistress.”

With a few quick adjustments, she powered the bot down before replacing it in the vent. “And I want my kahve hot first thing in the morning. Black. No sweetener.”

“I know, Mistress.” He stalked the room, then plucked up another surveillance bot from beneath a lamp. Instead of shutting the bot down, he crushed it between his fingers.

They found one more bot, this one hidden in the hygiene chamber, and deactivated it.

Back in the main room, he turned to face her. “Everything clear?”

“That should be it.”

“Good.” He prowled closer, darkly intent. “You could’ve told those idiots I was your partner, not your pleasure slave.”

“They know me too well. If I said I had a partner, it would have set off all kinds of alarms.”

He kept coming nearer, shoulders wide, arms tight and hewn, and she found herself backing up,

caught in the strange net of desire and apprehension.

“I could have been your mate.” He looked dangerous, a man on the verge of losing control. “Not your slave.”

She couldn’t tear her gaze from his lips, watching in fascination as he shaped the suggestive words.

“They’d believe that even less.” She sounded breathless, and, indeed, her lungs struggled to take in air as the wall came up to meet her. Trapped. “I’m too…strong willed…to be anyone’s mate.”

He stopped his pursuit, yet left only a few inches between their bodies. Heat surged from both of them. His face was all hard angles and shadows, his eyes dark and burning. He planted his hands on the wall, one on each side of her head. Caging her. Yet she knew with absolute certainty that if she pushed him away, or ducked under his arms to break free, he would let her go. Giving her the choice.

“Not smart. Buying a pleasure slave without sampling the merchandise.”

“What do you suggest?”

“A test flight.” Then he lowered his head, his mouth met hers, and she went up in flames.

The kiss they’d shared in the cockpit had been the barest hint at the desire that blazed between them now. Kell took her mouth, as she took his, and they consumed each other. An incendiary, shared devouring. He had firm but supple lips, audaciously confident in the way he tasted her, shaped her, as if her mouth, and everything else she had, belonged to him and him alone.

But the kiss didn’t belong to just him. Mara stroked the inside of his mouth with her tongue, and his flavors of whiskey and potent male intoxicated. Gods, she wanted to crawl inside him, claim his strength completely.

Even though his hands remained splayed on the wall behind her, she felt the kiss everywhere, as if he caressed her body with hot demand. Against the silky fabric of her blouse, her nipples tightened, and a sweet ache sounded in her pussy. She pressed her thighs together, determined to take this as far as it could go.

Finally, she broke the kiss long enough to gasp, “So far, I’m pleased with my purchase.”

“We haven’t even started.” He peeled one of his hands from the wall, and she held herself still,

waiting for his to either go straight for her breasts or between her legs. Instead, he stroked down her hair and rumbled with approval. “So goddamn soft. Hair like moonlight. Like dreams.”

Her heart fluttered. In his aching, beautiful words, she almost believed that there was more between them than desire. Yet that could not be true. They had this, a visceral need and attraction—

and that’s all they could ever have. 8th Wing and scavengers didn’t mix unless blackmail was involved.

She didn’t want to think any of that. All she wanted was him, and the pleasure he offered. She tilted her head back so he could touch her hair even more and to give him better access to her mouth.

He took advantage of both. She purred as he threaded his fingers through her hair, pressing his broad-tipped fingers into her scalp with exquisite pressure, and kissed her deeply.

A little pang of loss trilled some time later when he took his hand from her hair. Pleasure replaced loss as he trailed his fingers along her neck, feeling the speeding of her pulse, then caressed the bared, sensitive flesh of her chest before— oh, yes—cupping her breast.

She had small breasts, and his large palm covered her completely. The thin fabric of her blouse offered hardly any barrier between her flesh and his. His heat seared her, the rough skin of his hand rubbing against her beaded nipple. Silk gently abraded, and she arched into the sensation. He swallowed her gasp as he tugged the fabric down, baring her, and he gently but firmly took her nipple between his calloused fingers.

The energy and concentration she had grown to admire over the past few days was now solely directed at her—and it would have been frightening, if she hadn’t reveled in it.

He pulled back from the kiss just enough to stare down at her with smoldering eyes. With her breasts bared, pressed above the fabric of her corset, her mouth swollen from kissing, she probably resembled an Auroran courtesan. And she didn’t care. Delighted in it, to see the answering hunger in his face and his barely leashed body.

“You devastate me.” He sounded like a beast straining at its leash.

“Good,” she answered, because he did the same to her.

He stared at her, only just holding himself back. “Tell me what you want, Mara.”

“If I said I wanted you to stop, would you?”

“Yes.” The word was a guttural scrape, and he looked tortured by the thought. Yet she understood that he would honor her wishes. “Don’t tell me to stop.”

She not only trusted him, she trusted herself. She had the strength to yield control. It was hers to bestow or take away.

“Don’t stop.”

His mouth twisted, almost savage, then he bent and took her breast into his mouth. She barely held back a cry as she clutched his head to her. His tongue swirled over her nipple, teasing it into even greater sensitivity. The bristle on his cheeks rubbed against her flesh. The same ritual was repeated for her other breast, and soon she writhed against the wall.