Reece looked again at the woman sleeping beside him. She needed him to be hard on her. She needed him to be rough. So that’s what he would be.
Fairchild deserved her revenge.
He would make sure she got it.
CHAPTER 14
“Damn,” said Nash. “Would you look at that?”
Oh, I’m looking, Gwain Dutton thought. He had already unfastened his safety harness—he didn’t need it anymore, now that they were out of hyperspace—and he leaned forward in the copilot’s seat to get a better view. Navigational beacons flashed and blipped on the console in front of him, but he ignored them for the time being. His attention was focused instead on the object looming ahead, beyond the window of the cockpit, an outsized jewel adrift in the endless void.
Calyxia.
The resort hung suspended in the darkness, its jagged asteroid body bristling with docking tubes like metallic roots sprouting from a clod of dirt. The bulk of the rock tapered to a point at the bottom, while the top swelled into a broad, roughly circular plateau, its surface capped by a shimmering dome of glass. Beneath that dome, Dutton could make out the shapes of glittering towers surrounded by lush green gardens and deep azure pools. A miniature paradise, sealed tight against the unforgiving vacuum of space.
Nash seemed less impressed. “Looks like a damn snow globe,” he muttered from the pilot’s seat.
Even though Nash was the youngest member of the team, he was the best pilot among them, so it was his job to bring them in for a landing. Dutton was there, ready to assist if necessary, but he knew it wouldn’t be. During their time together, he’d seen the kid do things with spaceships that should not have beenpossible. The rings of Uz came to mind. Or that one time in the Necropolitan undercity. Dutton still had dreams aboutthat. Bad ones.
Behind them, in one of the passenger seats, Reece chuckled coldly.
“A snow globe,” he said. “Yeah. And we’re gonna shake it up.”
Fairchild didn’t say anything at all. In fact, she hadn’t said a word since they’d come out of hyperspace a few minutes before. She was sitting directly behind Dutton, so he couldn’t see her without turning around in his seat, but he could imagine her intense expression as she glared out through the windscreen, and he couldfeelthe heat of her pent-up rage.
Somewhere down there in that glittering city of sin was the man she had come to murder.
And Dutton was going to help her find him.
Chatter came across the speakers as a space traffic controller hailed their incoming ship. Dutton handled the comms. The ship moved forward, and the asteroid grew in size, until it filled the viewport completely. Nash eased them into their assigned docking bay with such gentleness he might have been guiding a spoon into a baby’s mouth. Once they were in, the teeth of the airlock clanged shut behind them with a harsh, metallic finality. They had arrived.
“Alright, people,” Reece said from the back of the cabin. “Suit up.”
***
Suit up indeed, Dutton thought several minutes later as they rode the transport elevator up to the surface. He was dressed in a gray double-breasted suit with a black turtleneck underneath. Black leather dress shoes. Black pocket square. Gold watch. It was all he could do to keep from fidgeting. Formal was not his thing. Neither was expensive, unless it was functional, and this suit was anything but. Six goddamn buttons on the jacket, but he was only supposed to use one of them. What the hell kind of sense did that make?
Reece appeared to be more at ease in his getup—midnight blue three-piece, crisp white dress shirt, and a rich silver-gray tie. To the unknowing eye, he could easily pass for a highly successful businessman. One who spent all of his free time at the gym.
Nash, on the other hand, was sporting more of a rockstar look. Underneath his charcoal blazer, he wore a plain white tee with a smattering of tastefully placed holes around the hem and neckline. A pair of ripped designer jeans and alligator boots completed the outfit.
Lucky bastard, Dutton thought. Why couldn’thehave gotten a wardrobe like that? He ran his finger under the edge of his turtleneck and winced.
Then his eyes fell on Fairchild.
It was perhaps the hundredth time they had fallen on her since she’d first emerged from her walk-in closet a few minutes before, and each time he looked at her, a fresh surge of arousal went rushing into his cock.
She was wearing a simple black dress that conformed to her body so tightly, it could have been applied with an airbrush. The fabric served to accentuate rather than conceal, and Dutton’seyes rode her feminine curves all the way down. There was a slit up one side to show off a single perfect thigh. It was all Dutton could do to keep from dropping to his knees in front of her and licking every inch of that smooth expanse of skin.
When he glanced up at her face, however, he could see she was every bit as uncomfortable as him. Perhaps even more so. She was a soldier, a natural-born killer, and she still wasn’t used to getting in touch with her feminine side—even though Dutton and his two partners had spent the last week touching that side of her very, very deeply.
Probably should have spent a little time on wardrobe training, he thought, instead of nonstop morning-to-midnight sex.
Nah.
Besides, once they got checked into their suite, the wardrobe wouldn’t be a problem anymore. The clothes would come off, and they would put all that intensive training to use breaking in their new bed. Dutton could hardly wait.
Neither could his cock. If it weren’t for the compression shorts he had on underneath his suit, the front of his britches would be looking like a tent right now.
