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

could have just been saying that to get her to have sex, but he found her attractive, or he wouldn’t want to have sex.  
    Kiri shivered as she again imagined him touching her. Oh, glory. Would she have time for a shower-dry first? She sniffed her armpit and grimaced—coffee and sweat. Not too bad, but still.
    She ran her fingers through her hair, trying to comb the unruly waves into a semblance of order. She’d done a crap job cutting it. In the cubby of toiletries, she found some hair cream that smelled wonderful. She dabbed and tucked until her hair was in some semblance of order.  
    She used the lavatory, wishing she could spend some time in the sleek shower-dry. The tube in her tiny apartment emitted water either too cold or too hot and smelled funky even after she ran the cleaning cycle.  
    She washed her hands, grimacing at them too. She needed a manicure. Her nails were clean, but her hands were rough and chapped, with burns old and new marring her golden skin.  
    Well, it was honest labor that had made them so, nothing to be ashamed of. This was just a moment out of time for her. She’d have dinner with Logan Stark and maybe more, and then it would be back to her life in the dark, gritty streets of New Seattle.  
    For a moment, remembering the black hole her life had imploded into with the loss of all that credit, she wanted to huddle on the floor and whimper. But she wouldn’t let herself crumble. She’d get through this somehow, just as she always did. She had a few friends, and she had her coffee stand, and she had her own lodestar, the purpose that kept her going every day.
    This dinner with him was just an aberration in her orbit. Hopefully a safe one.  
     
    ***
     
    Logan Stark waited with keen anticipation for his guest to return to the main cabin of his cruiser. Kiri Te Nawa might not be polished, perfumed and physically enhanced as the women he usually took, but she was beautiful as a wild doe.  
    No, a wild cat, he corrected himself, amused. With those tilted eyes spitting golden fire, and her slender hands clawed to attack the sleazy gambler, she resembled the Tyger females he’d met on the planet Bryght. She must have Tygean blood in her ancestry.  
    Her husky voice added to the illusion. Perhaps she’d suffered damage to her larynx at some point, but he found the slight roughness in her voice, the way it cracked under emotion, unexpectedly alluring.  
    Her slim, taut body had felt very good in his arms, too. She had a curvy ass below her small waist, and in her snug uniform, her breasts were high and round. Not as large as he usually preferred, but then that was what made women so fascinating—their endless variety, the mystery of discovering what made each one of them unique.
    This one had a spirit as wild as the cats she reminded him of, and she shone like a sleek purebred in a pack of alley-bred mongrels.
    He’d found her by accident. With time on his hands after a meeting with space port authorities, he’d been walking. Out of curiosity, he’d ended up in the oldest section of the space port. He passed loading bays for discount cruise lines and smaller private bays that he guessed shrewdly were used by those who preferred to avoid the brightness of the new concourses, their trade better conducted in the shadows.  
    There were families and business travelers just like on the new main concourses, but these folk were shabbier. A few toughs cast him avaricious looks, as if wondering whether he could be dragged into a dark alcove and robbed. Stark watched them decide against aggression and move on, realizing he was no easy mark despite his grooming. Wise choice on their parts.  
    His brother Joran would say he was slumming. Because he’d been here before, many times. Once this shabby area had seemed palatial to youths looking for a safe place to get in out of the cold rain and scavenge something to eat and drink.  
    And while he’d never mugged innocent travelers as these toughs