Kieran Read online

  The man drew a weapon—a knife, because only patrollers were allowed to carry projectile weapons on Bor Narga. Crews of docked ships had to lock away their guns and the like until they left atmosphere.

  The knife was good sized, but one man with a knife Kieran could handle. The other six who came up behind the first, also pulling knives, might be trickier.

  Kieran’s first instinct, bred into him since day one, was to control the situation by any means necessary. That might entail talking around them or using his Dom skills to make them obey. Being level three didn’t only mean being dominant about sex.

  “Stop!” he commanded. His voice rang across the cargo bay, echoing off the metal walls.

  The men, conditioned to obey orders, did.

  “You call this ship secure?” Kieran growled at them. “I snuck on here easy as anything. Not the kind of transport we want to hire.”

  “You a patroller?” the first man asked.

  “I told you what I was,” Kieran returned. “Someone who wants to hire a ship. But not this one. Have a good night.”

  He strode past them, as though completely unworried about the steel blades that could reach out and slice him open. The crew let Kieran make it all the way to the bottom of the ramp before they worked out that he was bullshitting them.

  “What the hell are you doing?” the lead man bellowed to the others. “Don’t let him get to the patrollers!” A few more men got behind Kieran while the others surged to him down the ramp.

  Kieran faced them, unafraid. “I told you, I wasn’t a patroller.” And for all the gods’ sakes, don’t summon them.

  “Then you’re a rival,” the lead man said. “He’s seen too much. Gut him.”

  “Shit,” Kieran said clearly.

  Fight or run, that was the choice, and run was blocked by the four men behind him.

  “My lady will be pissed off if you cut me up too bad,” Kieran said, still sounding unworried. “I promised her a long night.”

  “Your lady will have to suck it.”

  “She’ll have nothing to suck if you whack it off.”

  A couple of the men paused, as though they wanted to laugh. The leader didn’t smile. “Teach him a lesson, boys.”

  “Aw, fuck this,” Kieran said, and swung his big fist into the nearest man.

  Shareem were made for sex first, and chemicals had been pumped into them as they’d developed to keep them tame and not violent. But they were also big and strong, and had spent time sparring with each other in secret at DNAmo, to keep in shape and work off steam when no sex was available.

  The man Kieran hit went down under his blow, but the others decided to jump on him all at once. Kieran twisted and fought, punching and blocking, while knives cut through his thin tunic and into his flesh.

  His fists made plenty of contact, but hot pain sliced him, several of the blades biting deep. He’d keep fighting, but eventually he’d lose enough blood to make him pass out, and then the men would finish him off.

  The patrollers would find his body in a restricted area, but at least they wouldn’t be able to arrest him for it. Kieran imagined the disappointed looks on their faces, and gave a grim laugh.

  He grew dizzy as more knives cut into him, but he kept fighting. Fighting wasn’t as fun as sex, but it was pretty good. The only thought Kieran didn’t like was that if these men killed him, he’d never see Felice again.

  A whirlwind blew into the dock site. At least, Kieran thought it was a whirlwind, not being able to see much beyond the fists and knives coming at him. A freak sandstorm, maybe.

  The wind turned into a woman in a plain coverall with a jeweled collar around her neck. Kieran couldn’t stop to stare in shock, but as he fought, he saw her spin her body and kick one of the fighters in the side. The man grunted in surprise, gasped for breath, and fell heavily to the deck.

  Another spin, another precise kick, and another. Two more men dropped, groaning.

  The remaining crew finally got it through their skulls that Felice was a threat, and turned from Kieran to face her instead, blades ready.

  Two knives flew out of hands with one back kick and one front, then she delivered a rapid succession of blows to the men still standing. They never had a chance to use their knives at all.

  As they started to fall, Kieran grabbed the two remaining men by the backs of their necks, shaking them with his strength until they went limp, unconscious.

  Kieran heard others running toward them as he gaped at Felice, who was breathing as hard as he was, but smiling in glee.

  “Holy fucking—” Kieran began, but Felice grabbed his hand.

  “Let’s go before the patrollers get here.”

  Good advice. Kieran stepped over bodies on his way off the ramp, and then he and Felice ran for the edge of the dockyards. Felice had the presence of mind to grab the robes she’d dropped, and she pulled them over herself, hiding the truth of her once more.

  *** *** ***

  Kieran slammed into his apartment, Felice still holding on to his hand.

  Kieran released her so swiftly that she kept going with momentum until she landed breathlessly on the couch. While Kieran slapped the door shut in the face of Calder, who’d followed them, Felice tiredly clawed her way out of the voluminous robes and dropped them to the floor. She lay back, breathing hard, automatically drawing to mind techniques for calming her body.

  Kieran crossed the room and stood over her, solid and strong, rage in his eyes. “What the fuck was that?”

  Felice coughed, her throat too dry from fighting in this stupid climate. “That was me, saving your ass.”

  “Saving my ass?” Kieran glowered down at her. “It should be me spanking your ass. You were supposed to be hiding. You think those guys won’t report a woman who spins around like one of those dervishes, and drops everyone in her way?” He stopped. “How the hell did you do that?”

  “Kieran, you’re bleeding.”

  Felice came off the couch, her metabolism trying to return her body to normal. Was taking too long, though. If she hadn’t been exhausted by her years of manual labor, she’d already be healed and ready to go another round.

  Kieran’s tunic underneath the robes Calder had shoved at him as they’d come out of the dockyards was shredded and covered with blood. Calder had growled that any patroller, no matter how stupid, would notice a Shareem covered in blood and wonder why. He’d glared until Kieran had put on the damn robes.

  Now Felice peeled the tunic away from his skin. Kieran helped, but irritably. Felice took in the masses of cuts on his body, some shallow, some pretty deep—one or two should have been lethal. Kieran had been sliced nearly to ribbons, and he was only angry about it.

  “Sit down,” Felice said swiftly. “You have any salve? Ointment? What kind of medicines are on this backwoods planet?”

  “Too many.” Kieran took a seat on the couch. Not falling or collapsing, just sitting down as though ready to ask her to bring him an ale. “Look in the bathroom. I don’t have much, though—Shareem don’t get sick.”

  Felice left him long enough to dive into the little bathroom. The lights came on obligingly, and she found a cabinet set into the wall. She had no idea what each of the jars were for, so she brought them all out with her.

  Kieran laughed when she arrayed them on the table. “These are lube.” He swept one big hand across the table, shoving all but two jars aside. “And oils. For sex. Aiden mixes them for me.”

  Felice refused to let herself be enticed by the thought of Kieran smoothing oil on her naked body. “What are these for then?” She touched the two remaining jars.

  “Antiseptic and something to keep up energy.”

  “Really? You seem pretty energetic all the time.”

  “Not for me. For my women.”

  “Oh.” So they could stay alert and ready for whatever he wanted to do, he meant. She pushed away her little burn of jealousy. “What do you do when you get hurt?”

  Kieran shrugged. “Go to Kat
arina. She’s Calder’s lifemate, and a medic.”

  “Calder, the Shareem you just slammed the door on.”

  “Yep.”

  Felice rose to her feet and started for the front door, but Kieran caught her hand in an amazingly strong grip. “I’ll be fine.”

  “No, you won’t. Some of those cuts need to be closed up before your insides spill out. Any of them might get infected. Let me get the medic.”

  Kieran growled, but he released Felice’s hand. “She pokes around too much.”

  “Shit, Kieran. Fighters I’ve seen who look like you do were groaning on the floor and dead within an hour.”

  Kieran let out an aggrieved breath. “All right, all right. Get Katarina. Then you’re going to tell me why you can fight.”

  “Don’t women fight on Bor Narga?” Felice said on her way to the door.

  “Not like that. And they mostly hire off-worlders to do it for them.”

  “Yeah. Well.” Felice tapped the controls to open the door, to find herself facing a woman in flowing robes holding a medical-looking bag.

  “I’m Katarina,” the woman said in a smooth voice. Calder was coming up behind her, still wearing a scowl on his handsome face. “Calder said I might be needed.”

  Chapter Eight

  Katarina d’Arnal was good at her job, Felice decided. She watched the woman competently clean Kieran’s wounds then inject something into the larger wounds that started to close them even as she wiped up the excess.

  “Pseudoskin,” Katarina said, seeing Felice’s curiosity. “It acts as a filler while his own grows back. Seals the wound against infection too. Better than a bandage.”

  Felice had to concede that Bor Nargans knew about medicine and medical technology—they’d perfected the art of genetic engineering, if the Shareem were anything to go by.

  Calder sat in Kieran’s sole chair, frowning as he watched. “You want to tell me why you were beating up the entire crew of a cargo ship?” he demanded. “The patrollers were all over that place after we left. When your victims tell them they were attacked by a giant with blue eyes wearing a black chain, we all go to jail.”

  “Shareem aren’t violent,” Kieran said, unworried. “Everyone knows that, right?”

  “Those guys were from Cass IV. They won’t know that. What the hell were you doing?”

  Felice stepped in front of Kieran, who only rubbed his healing skin in irritation and didn’t look upset by Calder’s questions.

  “Leave him alone,” Felice said, squarely meeting Calder’s gaze. “He was trying to get away from them. He tells me that someone called Rees sent him to the dockyards in the first place. Who’s Rees?”

  Katarina answered, sounding amused. “The ultimate Shareem.”

  “The ultimate pain in the ass,” Kieran rumbled behind Felice. “Tell him to do his own dirty work from now on, Calder. I’m busy.”

  “Shut up,” Calder snapped. “You want to talk even more? We don’t know this woman.” He gave Felice another glare.

  “She’s mine,” Kieran said. He reached up and brushed his finger over the back of Felice’s collar. The touch made her warm all over. “She won’t say a word.”

  “For now,” Calder said. “What about when she goes?”

  “By then it won’t matter.”

  Felice had no idea what they were talking about, but she sensed it was something important. Deadly important.

  “I won’t go to the patrollers with anything you tell me, or anything I see,” Felice said. “You have my word. I have no interest in talking to them, and all kinds of interest in leaving Bor Narga as soon as I can.”

  Calder flicked a gaze over her. “So buy a ticket and get on a transport.”

  “More complicated than that.”

  Felice expected Kieran to explain to his friends that she was in hiding, having escaped from near-slavery to TGH Corp, and that she wasn’t about to expose herself. Kieran, however, simply sat back on the sofa, rubbing his forearm and frowning. Though his bare torso was covered with angry cuts, now cleaned, he hardly seemed to notice them.

  “Why is it complicated?” Calder asked Felice.

  Katarina busied herself putting away her medical accoutrements and didn’t join the conversation. She looked as though she agreed with Calder about not trusting Felice, and Felice couldn’t blame her. No one knew Felice. She could be anybody, and the Shareem, she was coming to understand, didn’t trust lightly.

  “I told you,” Felice said. “I will say nothing, and leave as soon as I’m able.”

  Kieran came off the sofa. “Give it a rest, Calder. I got this.”

  Calder didn’t look happy, but he closed his mouth, and Katarina shot both men a look of relief.

  “Besides,” Kieran said, moving into his tiny kitchen and coming out with a large tumbler of water. “That crew won’t remember me. They’ll remember Felice.” He grinned. “You should have seen her. She had their asses on the ground before I could get in more than a few punches.”

  Katarina returned her attention to Felice. “Really?” she asked, interested.

  Felice shrugged, her heart beating faster. “It’s just something I learned how to do.”

  “It was fucking amazing,” Kieran said. “I’d have her demonstrate, if we weren’t going to be busy for the next couple of days.” He gave Calder a pointed look. “Seriously busy. Thanks for patching me up, Katarina.”

  “No problem,” Katarina gave him a big smile. “You know I love helping Shareem.”

  “Good, then help Calder find his way to the door.”

  Calder rumbled something, but he took Katarina’s arm and steered her to the entrance. Felice had the feeling, though, that if Calder hadn’t wanted to go, hadn’t thought it all right to leave Kieran alone with Felice, he never would have.

  Katarina resumed the fine-clothed robes she’d arrived in and gave Felice a friendly smile. Then she wrapped veils around her face and stepped out into the darkness of the Bor Nargan night, Calder close behind her.

  Felice shut the door and tapped the key to lock it. She turned around to find Kieran right behind her.

  He could move so fast. And without a sound.

  “I have a problem,” Kieran said.

  “What?” Felice took in his flushed face and his eyes filling with blue. “I thought getting cleaned up and poked at hurt you—you were certainly grumbling. Don’t tell me it turned you on.”

  “Not that. I hate doctors.” Kieran gripped Felice’s arms and kissed her throat above the collar. “It was the fight. Got me all worked up—jumpstarted my effed-up metabolism. And then seeing you, kicking and spinning and smacking, and knowing that was my woman, coming to my rescue . . .”

  “They were going to kill you,” Felice said, losing the rage that had kept her going for the last hours. “I saw that. I was so scared for you.”

  She ran her hands along his chest, feeling his heart pumping hard beneath too-hot skin.

  “You were scared?” Kieran sounded puzzled. “For me? Why?”

  “Because you’re kind of wonderful. I didn’t want to watch you die.”

  Kieran stared at her. The blue in his eyes didn’t recede, but he stilled his hands on her, didn’t continue the seduction.

  “Kieran?” Felice asked. “You all right?”

  He didn’t speak for a time, then said, “I don’t know what to do.” His voice was what Felice thought of as his normal one, not the dark-toned Dom. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

  She looked up at him, perplexed. “About what?”

  “You don’t say the right words, the right triggers. You’re supposed to want rough play, and either be afraid of me or turned on by me. Nothing else.”

  Felice blinked. “Why not anything else?”

  His grip tightened on her arms. “Because I’m Shareem. I’m Kieran. I’m nothing when I’m not the level three. I’m just the dumbass who runs everyone’s errands.”

  “What are you talking about?” Felice jerked away
. “You mean, I’m not supposed to like you when we’re not having sex?” Her anger rose, but not at him. “I’m not supposed to be grateful you helped me get away, that you didn’t tell your friends what I was?” Tears started, and Felice dashed them away. “I’m not supposed to think you’re funny, or be happy you gave me a place of refuge, where I can relax for the first time in years? Not supposed to be glad you’re keeping me safe?”

  She was crying now. Not exactly sobbing, but tears streaked down her cheeks.

  Kieran leaned down and kissed a falling tear from her lips. And the next one. His arms went around her, pulling her close, as he continued the kisses. Not like the Dom, but gently, almost tenderly, and Felice, shaking, kissed him back.

  *** *** ***

  Kieran’s body and brain were doing crazy things to him as he held Felice. The fight—he hardly ever fought physically—had him hot, his heart pounding harder than it should.

  Felice’s words: You’re kind of wonderful, had him on fire.

  He wanted her, but he wasn’t supposed to want, except in the most basic, physical way. He’d been created to teach, to please, to give a woman an experience she’d never forget.

  He shouldn’t want to bury himself in her, pull her close, and forget all about Shareem, transports, getting to Sirius III, and other unimportant shit like that.

  Felice’s mouth was a place of heat, soothing his torment. Kieran pushed her against the wall next to the door and gave up the struggle inside him. Felice’s hands locked behind his neck, and he lost himself in kissing her.

  Kieran’s fingers brushed her collar, and he smiled into the kiss. This woman—this strong, wild fighter, had been tamed to his touch. She wore his mark and didn’t fight it, the same way she’d worn the ropes with interest and courage.

  Kieran slid his fingers beneath the collar to rub her soft throat. He eased the kiss to its finish but remained pressed against her, gazing into her eyes.

  They warmed under his scrutiny, the strange gray-green hauntingly beautiful. Kieran kissed her eyelids, loving the feel of her lashes on his lips.