Mercenary Instinct (a science fiction romance) by Ruby Lionsdrake

her
business, but he wanted to know more about her and what she had
done to irk Felgard. He had a fondness for people with the balls to
stick it to those megalomaniacal finance coots. Which probably
meant he shouldn’t go down to talk to her, or have anything
to do with her. The last thing he needed was to develop an
attachment for someone he was going to hand over to a man who might
shoot her once he got her.
    Besides, Striker was already down there,
talking to the women. Viktor snorted again and took his dishes to
the cleaner. He ought to get the security feed later to watch that.
In part to make sure Striker didn’t violate his orders, and in part
to see how entertaining his rejection was.
    In the meantime, he lay down on his bed,
thinking thoughts of lavender and lilac... and a home that was no
more.

Chapter 3
    Ankari woke up when the lights, which had
been dimmed for the night cycle, powered up to full strength.
Striker was back, standing on the other side of the force field and
staring at her. At Jamie, actually. It was creepy. How long had he
been there?
    A pair of boots was visible on the desk at
the other end of the hall. Ankari found that reassuring, though she
didn’t know if she should. The crew might look the other way as
this Striker dragged a prisoner off to his cave for unspeakable
torments.
    “You rethink my offer?” Ankari sat up. She
and Jamie had been sleeping on the floor, while Lauren took the
bench. Every surface in the cell was equally hard.
    “Nah,” Striker said, “but the captain said we
could have sex.”
    “Uh, what?”
    Jamie was awake now, too, and hadn’t missed
the fact that the big brute was looking at her as he spoke. She
pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her
legs. With her eyes wide, glancing back and forth between Striker
and Ankari, Jamie appeared young and vulnerable. Ankari had been
anything but young at twenty, but when Jamie had spoken of the
small rural community she had grown up in and the strict father who
had shooed away boys, Ankari had gotten the impression that she
might still be a virgin without a birth-control implant or
anything. Not that anyone of any sexual experience couldn’t be
alarmed by Striker’s words.
    “He said we could get horizontal if you
agreed to it.” Striker grinned. “Or vertical. I’m easy.”
    That much was obvious. That the captain had
deemed it appropriate to let this thug wander down here and
proposition them gave Ankari one more reason to want to clobber
him. Still, this could turn out to be an opportunity.
    “Who exactly are you propositioning?” she
asked.
    “That one.” Striker pointed at Jamie, who
squeezed herself into a tighter ball. “But I’d poke any of you.” He
looked at Ankari’s chest, making her glad she wasn’t wearing
anything revealing. His pleased smile had all the charm of an
auto-tram barreling down the mountain at a woman tied to the
tracks.
    “How magnanimous.” Ankari touched the
cylindrical lump inside her jumpsuit pocket. She hadn’t decoded all
of the options inside the syringe tool—the display showed the full
medical names rather than ones a layman might know—but she had
recognized a sedative. She had risked showing Lauren, for
verification, though she had been worried about the camera picking
up the tool.
    “Who’s interested?” Striker puffed out his
chest. “I’m good at my job, all of my jobs, if you catch my
meaning.”
    “Shocking,” Lauren muttered, her eye
lingering on Ankari’s pocket.
    The real shock would be if this idiot had
ever convinced a woman to sleep with him without paying her. A
lot.
    “No, thank you,” Jamie said politely. The
wariness hadn’t faded from her eyes. She must wonder, as Ankari
did, if the thug would take no for an answer.
    Striker’s face remained unperturbed, or maybe
optimistic was the word, for he merely turned toward Ankari. “What
about you?”
    “Where would we do it?” Ankari asked. “Do you
have a private