Seeing Stars Read online

  He stared at her. “But…”

  Milla shook her head again, her smile faltering. She turned away. “No, Jarden. I mean it. I couldn’t have let you sacrifice yourself to protect me, and I can’t bind you to me either. I know what it’s like to be bound to someone who doesn’t love me. I don’t want to do that ever again.”

  The soft sound of his breathing was all she heard. Then the soft pad of his footsteps as he went to the door. The room shuddered. The lights flickered. The automated announcement told them the Pleasure Princess was once more engaged in interstellar travel.

  And when she looked up, Jarden had done just what she wanted.

  He was gone.

  “Hot pussy,” Pete moaned. “Hot, wet, slick pussy.”

  “Yeah, man. Whatever.” Jarden rolled over in his bunk to face the wall, while Pete watched the jack-off channel. “Take my shift and get all the hot pussy you want.”

  “You mean it?” Pete sounded happy.

  Fuck. Pete always sounded happy. “Yeah, man. I mean it.”

  “You don’t have to work?”

  Not with the credits in his account, he didn’t. Jarden pulled the covers up higher around his neck. In two more days they’d reach the end of the cruise and he’d be able to get off this ship too. Pick a destination, any one he wanted.

  Or he could give her back the money, annul the contract, stay on the Pleasure Princess as she turned to make her way back across the universe, and wait another year while he earned his freedom with his cock.

  Jarden groaned.

  “You all right?” Pete placed a hand on Jarden’s shoulder. “Do you need the medbot?”

  “No. Just tired.”

  Pete didn’t really understand tired, but he left Jarden alone. Which is what he wanted. Wasn’t it? With another groan, Jarden punched the pillow.

  He’d been with hundreds of women, and Milla Sulay wasn’t the first who’d tasted good, or smelled good, or who’d writhed on his cock like a goddess. She didn’t have to be the last either…but she could be.

  Muttering, Jarden rolled onto his back to stare up at the top of the bunk above him. Field-husband. A fancy word for indentured fuck-slave, wasn’t it? Sure, field-husbands weren’t contractually bound to have sex with their partners. They got a share of the land, the profits. Field-husbands had rights.

  But they were still bought and paid for, and that was something Jarden had vowed not to be once he got off this ship.

  “Can I really have your shift?” Pete asked when the service light started blinking.

  “COKs never quit, right?” Jarden didn’t look at him.

  “Never quit!”

  “Go for it, buddy.”

  Jarden didn’t turn to watch him leave the small room they’d shared for five years. Pete didn’t bother saying goodbye or anything like that. COKs weren’t known for their manners.

  Jarden rolled onto his stomach to bury himself in the darkness beneath his blankets, but sleep eluded him. Instead, a fall of sleek, pale hair and bright, twinkling blue eyes formed a vision in his head. Milla.

  He’d seen her a few times before voluntarily imprisoning himself in his room. In the dining room and once on the vast star deck. She’d smiled at him and nodded, but made no move to talk to him, and he felt like more of an ass than ever for leaving the way he had.

  His stomach growled now, but the thought of ordering another meal in this room defused his hunger. The thought of watching another porn-vid, or reading another holo-bloid turned his stomach too. In fact, Jarden thought, as he tossed off the blankets with a growl, being in this frigging room much longer was going to drive him crazy.

  If he couldn’t even stand to stay in a cruiser cabin for a few days, how could he ever have imagined he’d be able to make it in prison? And he’d been saved from that certain fate by whom?

  Milla. The woman who’d offered him the chance to have everything he’d been working for. And what was keeping him from taking her up on her offer?

  “Nothing but my damned pride,” Jarden said aloud.

  Too bad he didn’t have anything else.

  Selcka, one year later

  Milla had waited until the sun dove behind the mountains before dipping herself a drink from the jug of water on her counter. Real, fresh water, a luxury she needed to carefully parcel out to herself, but one she deserved.

  She’d worked hard, supervising the fields that day and making sure her workers had all been paid before they took off for the three-day Selkcan holiday. She planned to use those three days to sleep, eat and read the carton of magazines that had finally arrived in the last shipment of supplies. Real paper magazines, something she hadn’t seen in years on Nidar, but which were common enough in Selkca’s single city. Out here on the homestead, a good magazine could be read over and over, then recycled into many uses.

  Milla was looking forward to the next three days, when she’d be without duties to perform. The Selkcan ’steaders had formed a close-knit community. She had friends. She’d even been courted, sort of, by a few of the single men and by one or two of those with wives too. Her life on Selkca was fulfilling and good…and incredibly hard. Could anyone blame her if she chose to stay at home, relaxing, instead of mingling with the rest of the holiday celebrants?

  So, when the knock came at her door, Milla was less than pleased. Assuming it was Heldaig, the Selkcan native she’d hired to assist her, Milla flung open her door with a sigh.

  And promptly lost her breath.

  “Jarden?”

  He nodded. “Milla. Hi.”

  She stepped aside at once to let him in, her mind already whirling with the thoughts about how he didn’t have to wait for her to open the door. He could just push inside. Technically, he owned part of this house. This land. Part of everything she’d worked for, so hard, because though he hadn’t come there with her, he’d never had the contract annulled.

  “Thanks.” Jarden smiled at her, and her heart leaped at the memory of his touch.

  She served him sweet Selkcan tea and cookies from a tin that had traveled far and were a welcome treat despite being stale. They sat across from each other in her tiny kitchen. Their knees bumped beneath her table.

  “So,” she said when she couldn’t stop herself from it any more, “why are you here?”

  Jarden pulled a small cloth bag from the pocket of his jumpsuit and pushed it across the table to her. “I owe you this.”

  Milla didn’t take it. “You don’t.”

  He smiled. “Yes, I do. And I worked my ass off for a year to get it, so don’t turn me down.”

  She didn’t have to open the bag to know it contained Selkcan crystals. Currency. She looked up at him. “You never annulled the contract.”

  Jarden shook his head. “No.”

  “Why?”

  He sighed and scrubbed at his face. “I didn’t want to. But I didn’t want to show up with a debt on my hands either.”

  He got up, paced the floor, looked out her small window to the night beyond. When he finally turned to her, Milla realized she was holding her breath. He moved fast, too fast for her to get away, and took her hands to pull her to her feet.

  “You still don’t know me,” he said.

  She shook her head, but didn’t pull her hands from his. “No. But you don’t know me either.”

  He stroked her hair away from her face. “It’s crazy to make a life with a stranger, isn’t it?”

  “No more than many others have done,” Milla replied. Her mouth parted, waiting for him to kiss her, but Jarden didn’t.

  “You’ll take the money?”

  “If you want me to.” She smiled, inching closer. “It’s not like I couldn’t use it.”

  “You’ve made a success of this place,” Jarden said as the distance between them became nothing.

  “I have. Thanks. But there’s still more work to do. Always more. And I could really use someone to share it with, Jarden.” Milla stretched onto her toes to give him her mouth.