Mercenary Instinct (a science fiction romance) by Ruby Lionsdrake Page B

herself.
    Striker extended his arm, as if he were
inviting her to stroll out to a ballroom floor with him. Right.
    Ankari licked her lips and stepped out. She
resisted the urge to look back at her partners with a
what-have-I-done expression on her face. Instead, she laid her hand
on Strider’s arm and smiled up at him. He reactivated the force
field and led her past empty cells and to the door at the end of
the corridor.
    “Gotta sign her out,” said the soldier at the
desk. He was watching a movie on his tablet—maybe he hadn’t been
all that entertained by Striker’s attempts to woo a prisoner after
all.
    “The captain said—” Striker started, but the
soldier interrupted him.
    “I don’t care what the captain said. I’m not
getting busted on account of your oversexed tent pole. Gotta sign
her out.” He flipped from his movie to a signature form and held it
up for Striker.
    Ankari was beginning to wonder what the
captain had said. It seemed to have changed from the time
Striker had first entered to now. Rewriting the conversation in his
head as he went along, was he?
    Striker shrugged and scribbled his name with
his finger, then led Ankari out the door. He slung an arm around
her and started groping her as they walked. She hoped it wasn’t far
to his quarters, but if it was... she let her hand dangle close to
her pocket.
    “This is going to be fun,” he promised.
    “Can’t wait,” she mumbled.
    “Really?” He stopped in front of an alcove
with a ladder going up, his eyes burning like he might strip her
down right there.
    “No, I can wait.” The man was literal, wasn’t
he? “I want the romance. The music, remember? And your comics.”
    “Oh.” He brightened, then stepped onto the
bottom rung. “Yes, I just drew a new panel. You’ll like it.”
    He was an artist? She couldn’t even imagine
what he might draw. Something lurid, probably.
    “Follow me,” he said.
    Between one eye blink and the next, she
realized he was giving her the opportunity she had been hoping for.
While he was climbing, he wasn’t holding her and couldn’t see what
she was doing. She lunged up the rungs behind him to catch him
before he clambered out on the next level. Fortunately, he was
going up two levels. They were halfway to the top deck when she got
close enough to stab him in the butt with the needle. She jammed it
in without mercy, knowing it had to go through a couple of layers
of clothes and also knowing that he would jerk away as soon as he
felt it. She pressed the button that released the drug.
    “What was that?” he roared, spinning on the
ladder and staring down at her.
    “My fingernails,” Ankari said, trying to hide
the syringe from view and hoping the sedative kicked in quickly. “I
saw your hard butt and couldn’t resist—”
    He dropped down, smacking her arm away. “That
wasn’t any fingernail.”
    Her knuckles banged against the side of the
ladder well, and the syringe flew from her hand. It bounced off a
rung, dropped a floor and a half to the deck below, and rolled into
the light spilling in from the corridor.
    “You drugged me?” Striker demanded, taking
another step down and reaching for her hair.
    And that was her cue to run.
    Ankari let go a hair’s breadth before he
could grab her hair, skimming down the ladder and dropping to the
deck. She lunged out into the corridor. Fortunately, it was late
enough that nobody else was around. She thought of sprinting in a
random direction, but plastered herself against the wall instead.
If she fled, she risked running into someone.
    Striker barreled out of the ladder well. He
must have expected her to run—he started to sprint, then stopped
himself with a jerk, his arms thrown out for balance, and she got
her split-second of surprise. She launched a foot at his exposed
torso. The sidekick slipped under his arm, hammering him in the
ribs. She’d thrown all of her weight behind it, but he was so big
that he didn’t even stagger to the side. He