FANGS

 FANGS

Maris crossed her arms and deliberately mirrored Pierce’s closed-off body language.

Blast him! If she’d had the sense to arm herself before coming here, she’d be using him for target practice for being such a hard-assed whore-son of an asteroid miner. She should have known better than to let him distract her with his bare chest and those faded pants hanging dangerously low on his hips.

All I have to do is reach out, give those pants a little tug and…

Double blast him!

The deep rumbling growl of his voice filled with shadows still had the ability to awaken forbidden desires she’d locked away inside her soul. As for her heart, forget about that, she’d given her heart to him three achingly long years ago and lost all hope of ever being happy again.

She sucked in a deep breath and pushed away the memories fogging her brain. Another ragged breath helped her set aside the heat dancing across her skin with explicit intensity.

Hmmm. Now that she had a few moments to think, Pierce’s skin had an unhealthy yellow tinge instead of the normal dark tan of his mixed-race ancestry. Plus, the elaborate dragon wings tattooed on his back that curled around his shoulders, arms and sides like feathers looked even darker than usual.

A critical eye over his pants confirmed her suspicions. They were riding low ‘cause he’d lost weight, not as a reminder of how he knew exactly what to do to drive her crazy with a single kiss. He must have pushed himself to the limit stringing jumps one after the other in order to arrive here at such short notice. No doubt about it, he needed fresh blood soon to regain his strength, not a few packets of freeze-dried synthetic pap.

The few times she’d allowed him to sink his fangs into her skin, she’d experienced the most thrilling, mind-blasting orgasms. Her nipples puckered just thinking about it again. Standing straighter, she tightened her stomach muscles to quell the lusty churning inside her belly.

The ball is in my court now. Not his.

She cocked her head to the left. “If you want to be a bastard, fine. Go away. I don’t need your help. I’ll snag a goon from security, tell the Avee he’s my zemebra and join forces with them to hunt down this low-life who’s terrorizing my station.”

Pierce moved.

One moment he was at the other end of the corridor. The next, he leaned over her and put his hands on her waist, up high.

Maris straightened her spine. Okay, maybe he’s not quite as weak as I assumed.

He splayed his thumbs over her ribs. Heat radiated from his skin like a rocket ready to flame out. “Fool. Do you have any idea what it means if you ask one of the security goons to be your zemebra?”

Why was he so upset? It didn’t make any sense. She already knew what zemebra meant. There was no reason for him to react like this.

She flattened her hands against his chest. That didn’t help. It took every ounce of control she had left not to dig her fingers into his muscles and purr like a cat in heat.

Her head told her to push him away, but her heart said yes as if there were no connection at all to her brain. She couldn’t pull her fingers away from his heated skin. “What’s your problem? It’s just the Avee word for a bodyguard, a hunter of criminals.”