Even Mara, piloting her ship out of the city, looked faintly disgusted by what she saw, the same as when she’d taken a long look at the club’s daylit interior. Long-held beliefs falling away to reveal something raw and new beneath.

“Good to shake off that dump’s grime,” she murmured. She guided the ship above the skyline,

through the columns of greasy smoke and between the soundskiffs blaring pop songs and advertisements. Thick storm clouds formed a roiling, lightning-lashed boundary above them. “It’s time to start looking for a new place to roost.”

“Because of me.” A flat statement of fact that nevertheless cut deep. PRAXIS had ultimately cost him his home, but the 8th Wing had taken Mara’s by forcing her involvement, turning her traitor.

“Because of me.” She glanced over at him sitting beside her, and her eyes were the crystal green of distant oceans.

She didn’t blame him, though she had every right to. This day alone, she had given him unexpected gifts—protection, absolution. All he knew of honor and friendship was from the 8th Wing.

Mara owed him nothing. She was not a fellow soldier adhering to a shared code of conduct. What she gave him came from herself, her own will, her own strength.

He felt a change within his own self. Yet he did not feel diffused. Rather, he’d never been so sharp—she was the stone that honed him into a razor edge.

“Plausible deniability,” said Kell. “Tell everyone you didn’t know I was 8th Wing. That I was working undercover as a pleasure slave, and I forced you to cooperate.” Which wasn’t far from the truth.

“And lose my scavenger rep.” Her mouth quirked.

“Maybe your pride will get knocked down a little,” he acknowledged, “but you’ll come out clean.”

“As clean as anyone can be in the Smoke Quadrant.” She guided the ship through the heavy traffic above Beskidt By.

“You need cover, and I’m giving it to you.”

“And you don’t have to. I’ve got some thinking to do. Maybe after this is over, I’ll have to chart some new paths.”

The idea that she might want to be anything other than a scavenger startled him. She seemed to cling fiercely to the life she had made for herself. Yet it made sense. She was wasted as a scavenger.

He hated to see anything, any one, squandered.

“I feel like I should apologize,” he said, “but I can’t apologize for something I don’t regret.”

“The damn problem,” she answered, turning away to look out the cockpit window, “is that regret’s in short supply for me too.”

A silence that wasn’t exactly comfortable, yet not completely strained, fell between them as Mara flew them out of the boundaries of the city. They both seemed to sense that they had strayed into unknown territory, where delineations of allies and antagonists, partner and lover, blurred. He understood only three things with absolute clarity. The first is that he would find and rescue Lieutenant Jur. Second, he would keep Mara safe. And thirdly, but just as important, he would have her. Nothing else held relevance.

Beskidt By disappeared behind them, giving way to stretches of scrubby plains blotched with signs of habitation. He thought he spotted a few private compounds nestled in the sides of hills and ringed with plasma fences that doubtless incinerated anyone stupid enough to try and breach them.

Smugglers’ lairs. Gods knew what kind of contraband or illegally-gotten merch was being stored down there.

It was a planet populated entirely by criminals. On his homeworld, he had also been a criminal,

doing whatever he needed to stay alive. He had killed, he had stolen. Nothing he was proud of. But he survived, just as Mara survived.

Cool and sleek as Almirian winter, she entered the coordinates for the auction site into the auto pilot. “At the speed we have to travel, we’ll just make the cut-off time.”

He burned with impatience to get to Lieutenant Jur, but revving his engine for the next few hours would accomplish nothing except burning fuel. “Give me as much intel as you’ve got about these auctions.”

“Can’t tell you much. Not my game. I’m a scavenger, not a merch go-between.”

“A woman in charge.”

Her smile was pure, wicked temptation, sending thick heat straight to his groin. “I’m very good at it too.”

Oh, he knew, recalling with blistering lucidity how she looked, how she felt, as she rode him.

Like the sweetest torture, too good to be endured. It had been just last night, yet too long ago. He wanted inside her, not just physically, but in every way, and that want grew ever stronger the closer they came to completing the mission. To her, their time together had a finite beginning and end. She would slip away from him, elusive, likely to disavow anything to do with him, both to anyone who asked and to herself.

A dark, primitive need uncoiled within him. On his homeworld, there had been no law or no magistrates to conduct the mating rite. When a Sayén man claimed his mate, he dug his teeth into the back of her neck, actually breaking the skin and drawing blood. The man staking his claim would rub ash into the wound, resulting in an indelible marking on his mate. It was savage and coarse, something he’d gladly left behind. Only now did he understand and feel its purpose.

He needed to mark Mara, claim her, so that she could never fully distance herself from him. She would know, in the depths of space and night, he had been inside her, had made her his own. The need was primal, and he yielded to it without a struggle. Mara was his.

His cock hardened, pressing tight against the fly of his pants, but he forced himself to stay exactly where he was instead of pouncing on her. He had hours to formulate a plan for the rescue, but now, in this brief window of time, he wanted only Mara. To brand her however he could.

“You’re good at being in charge?” He eyed her up and down, a deliberate provocation. “Prove it.”

She naturally rose to his goading, even as she sent him a look that said she knew exactly what he was doing. “The flyboy wants substantiation? That, I can provide.” After locking the autopilot, she rose from the captain’s seat.

Kell watched with hooded eyes as she slipped between him and the control panel. A change came over her, so subtly that he felt more than saw it. A freeing of herself, the deliberate choice to be as physical and unrestrained as she wanted. This was different from what had happened between them at the lodging in Beskidt By. Then, she had succumbed to the desire between them. Now, her choice to go wild was deliberate. His arousal burned hotter.

She bent down, placed her hands on his knees and pressed them apart, giving her more room and giving him an incredible view of the soft shadows between her breasts. Her nipples beaded against her blouse, tight points beneath the silk. She leaned close, keeping her mouth a bare inch from his own.

“This feels like proof.” She reached out and cupped him through the front of his pants. “And this.” Her whispered words were punctuated by the movement of her hand, grasping his shaft and running up its length.

He thought he might lose his mind when she unfastened his pants and took his cock into her hand.

Her slim fingers wrapped around him, stroking him, bare flesh to bare flesh. She caressed him as if he was more than a means to pleasure. As if he truly meant something to her.

Then she sank down to kneel between his legs. Kell’s breath ripped out of him as he stared down at her. The sight of her grasping his cock as she licked her lips made him fight for reserves of discipline—otherwise, this would be over far too soon.

“This,” she murmured.

“Yes.”

She lowered her head. Ran her tongue around the ridge of his cock. Around and around. And then she took him into her mouth, as much as she could fit. What she could not get into her mouth, she grasped with her hand, so that no part of him went unattended.