Stark Pleasure; the Space Magnate's Mistress (The LodeStar Series) Read Free

to catalogue her physical assets in the overt way of many males, she felt uneasily that he saw far more than she wanted him to. The lonely, vulnerable woman inside the veneer, starved for the warmth of a tender touch, for the knowledge that she belonged to someone.
    Oh, quark, that was ridiculous. He was just a guy, a rich one. He wanted what all guys wanted from her, a quick fuck and someone to listen to them. And that was all she could hope for here, someone to make one night less empty and cold. She sure wouldn’t be keeping warm with happy thoughts of how she’d invest her winnings.
    But her dark humor was tinged with excitement, the kind she felt when she was about to leap. Much as she reminded herself she needed both feet firmly on the ground, sometimes she reached for stars that were out of her grasp. Sometimes it worked, like investing her savings into this stand, going indie.  
    Today’s leap had been an epic fail. She’d been flung into empty space with nothing to grab onto. And she quarking hated this feeling. Played hell with her usual confidence.
    Here was an escape from her current freefall. Later she’d figure how to get her credit out of the Vulpean. Because she would have it—she didn’t care if what the little vermin had done was legal, no one cheated a te Nawa.  
    If it was only for herself, she’d tough it out, but she had another star to grasp. One which might be unreachable, but she’d never give up trying.
    “Coming?” Logan Stark asked.

Chapter 2
    “All right.” Kiri closed up her own kiosk’s security grid, and with a last vengeful glare at the now quiet gambling stand, she followed Logan Stark onto one of the small platforms that lifted travelers up to the hoverways. He escorted her onto the moving walkway and they zipped off above the concourse, across a rotunda and along a newer, brighter concourse.  
    Hanging onto one of the supports, Kiri studied her escort covertly. He had presence, a kind of force field around him, a magnetism that allowed him to draw others to him, bend them to his will.
    Even now that he wasn’t holding onto her physically, she wanted to stay close.  
    Quark, maybe he was Indigon and doing some kind of mind control on her. Nah, he didn’t have freaky dark blue eyes, and he certainly didn’t have their cold demeanor. His eyes were more like a locked hatch on a molten core of energy.
    He led her off the walkway onto one of the platforms, and it dropped them to the broad, gleaming concourse, near a large MoonPenny coffee stand with a line of well-dressed beings waiting to order.  
    Kiri followed Stark into a narrow private docking bay. Beside an open hatch waited a man in a gray flight suit like the pilots on the LodeStar holovid. Beyond, Kiri saw a female flight attendant in a trim, feminine version of the suit. She stood in a short podway, one of those that docked smaller cruisers landing at the space port.  
    Logan Stark owned a space corporation and his own cruiser. He was a wealthy, powerful man. Maybe that meant he thought he could do anything he wanted, treat humans as disposable.
    She stopped, just out of earshot of his two employees. He stopped as well, turning back to look down at her.
    “Why do you want to have dinner with me ?” she asked. He hadn’t really answered her the first time she asked.
    His hooded gaze gleamed, sparking an answering flame deep in her own core.  
    “Because you’re beautiful, and you interest me,” he said, his deep voice wrapping around her like a velvet leash. “Anything else you’d like to know before we board?”
    She swallowed, suddenly breathless. This man, who could probably have any female he wanted, thought she was beautiful? He must like the tired, pale type.  
    “Just one. You’re not into anything twisty, are you?”
    His brows lifted. “Over dinner? No.”
    Kiri’s face burned. Right. He hadn’t exactly invited her to do him in the back of his cruiser.  
    “However,” he went on in that