Whoops and hollers around them brought her back to the present as he stood and grabbed the front of his pants. With a sexy sway of his hips, he teased them all with the possibility he might take them off. Heat washed through her in an unstoppable torrent. He had a gorgeous ass. Firm and muscled, it begged to be grabbed, a woman’s fingers digging in as he powered into her. Crap, there she was, right back to sex again.
He reached out a hand in a silent order, his eyes daring her to take it. Her heart stalled, hot and cold chills chasing each other over her skin as catcalls and orders were bellowed from the darkness around them. They faded into the background as she looked at him, the world narrowing down to the confines of the spotlight trained on them, the music and the man dancing in front of her.
Confusion filled her. Why her? She was short, fat and not exactly dressed like any of the sex kittens who thronged the tables near the stage. Yet here he was, Johnny Ram, as large as life and twice as sexy, and he was dancing in front of her with that “come be bad with me” expression on his face.
In with both feet…
Before she could think and decide this was a bad idea, she put her hand in his and allowed him to haul her to her feet. He didn’t drag her all the way up against that ripped, oiled body, just halfway, more was the pity. She’d happily get covered in that bronze stuff for the chance to feel those hard muscles pressed against her. Hell, she’d never wash her clothes again. Just keep them hidden in her room and take them out to sniff whenever she had a crazed fan-girl moment.
Strong fingers wrapped around her wrist and pulled her arm out as he claimed the other with his free hand and did the same, dancing close to her. His eyelids dropped, hooding his eyes. She was so close she could see the numbers drawn on his cheek were beginning to run a little at the bottom, the ink feathering out over the pores of his skin, and that he had a tiny scar at the corner of his lip. Heat pooled in her cunt as the need to lick it pushed all other thoughts out of her head.
“Have dinner with me,” he whispered in her ear as he turned them and pinned her between him and the table. Hard hands urged her back so she was sitting on it, legs spread so he could dance between them. She swallowed convulsively. Asleep, she had to be asleep. Yeah, that was it. She was asleep. Because in her reality, sexy as sin men like Johnny Ram did not ask women like her to dinner.
“Wha…?” she managed to croak, her ability to frame a coherent sentence stolen as he urged her back, bracing himself over the table and doing the air-fuck thing again. Right over her. Almost touching her. The heat of his body beat at hers despite the thin fabric of her t-shirt. She couldn’t even think of what was going on further south, her brain shorting out at the fact she had Johnny Ram between her thighs.
“Dinner. Tonight.”
He had her wrists again, pinning them over her head. Using the movement to cover what he was doing, he swept his thumb over her wrist mounted data strip. The thing bleeped as it registered his comm details.
“You. Me.”
He hauled her upright, beefy arms holding her in a close embrace that managed to keep a couple of inches between their bodies as required by law for a public performance.
“Say yes,” he ordered, pinning her with that green-gold gaze. Heat filled his eyes, the instant response licking her skin with flames of need.
“I…” she shook her head as he stepped back, staggering a little as a sense of loss filled her. Instantly she missed the feeling of his strong arms around her.
She squeaked and covered her gasp with her hand as he ripped the combats off in one quick movement. The room around them went wild, the noise almost deafening. The challenge still in his eyes he paraded in front of her, posing and posturing as the music changed to machine again.
God, he was perfection itself. The pants gone, only a small thong covered his modesty, the black fabric stretched and straining over an impressive package. Already he was hard, the thick length of his dick easily visible.
“Say yes.”
A note of warning crept into his tone as he fisted the fabric of the thong, twisting it in his grip. A sense of expectation and shock filled the room. Johnny was a stripper, yes, but he never did full nude in his act. Not this way anyway. He always waited until he was on stage and whipped the thong off at the last minute when his back was to the audience, leaving them with a view of his firm ass.
Regret filled her. Milly shook her head as reality intruded. She came here to escape the cluster-fuck that was her life. Hot fantasies about a sexy man were one thing, but having dinner with a person, someone who could actually get hurt by his association with her, was another.
“No, I’m sorry…” she said as she backed up. Looking blindly around, she searched for a way to escape the women crowded around them. She shouldn’t have come here. If Jason found out… Heart pounding in her chest for a very different reason, she pushed through the catcalling women, leaving the sexy-as-sin Johnny behind as she fled.
Chapter Two
Her steps hastened by panic and the adrenaline of being approached by Johnny Ram, a man she’d lusted over from afar for months, it didn’t take Milly long to reach her ship and then her quarters. The door slid shut behind her and she leaned against it, every cell in her body vibrating with energy.
Despite her panic and the speed she’d put distance between herself and the club, a smile spread over her lips. He’d asked her to dinner. Johnny Ram—big, sexy Johnny Ram—had asked her to dinner. It was impossible, unbelievable, like the wolf asking a mouse to dinner. A shiver hit her. From the hot look in his eyes though, she suspected that the mouse would end up as dinner…
Heat wriggled insidiously through her, adding another wave of dampness to her panties as she pushed off from the door and flicked a glance toward the bedroom portion of her open-plan quarters. Later, she promised herself. Later she’d head on down and recover her “toy” case from her locker in the hold and spend some quality time with her battery operated friends. She sighed. But not yet. The console on the desk built into the opposite wall was blinking to notify her of unread messages so she headed that way instead. Work came first.
She pulled the desk chair free from the wall, watching and waiting as it swung out in an arc and unfolded into a full sized seat pad. Even though these were the captain’s quarters, space was at a premium. Everything on board was designed to save space, to fold or slide away and make more room, even in here. Not for her the expansive and plush suites of some ship captains.
No, she got a bed built into the wall, a bubble shower enclosure and a rotating toilet which operated like a false wall in the old movies she’d watched as a kid. One moment a book shelf, press a button and hey presto, the wall turned and the ivory throne was right there. But she wouldn’t trade it for the world, or several worlds. The Starflame was the last thing she had to remind her of her beloved grandfather. After spending many years in high society, the daughter-in-law of a Fleet Admiral with all the rules and protocol that made her want to scream and run nak*d through the corridors just to alleviate the sameness of everything, the ship, running cargo, represented freedom.
Sliding into the swing-out seat, she logged onto the console and waited as the comms screen opened up. The Starflame’s computer core was an older model, dependable, but slow. She drummed her nails on the extenda-desk, watching the screen scroll up to the latest messages.
“Bill. Bill. Rubbish. Notification of docking. Bill. No, I do not need ocular enhancement. I’d like to keep the eyes I was born with, not have them replaced with some vat-grown monstrosities, thank you very much.” She yawned as she rapidly flicked through the messages, filing or deleting them as appropriate. She reached the last and her eyes widened as she recognized the name. Why was Jason contacting her on her personal comm channel?
Her fingers shook as she tapped on the message. She’d once thought that Jason Templeton was the perfect man. Tall, blond and handsome, he’d been the epitome of charm when they’d first met. She’d told him she didn’t want to date a fleet officer, but he’d worn her down. Within three months, they were married. He’d started hitting her within six, each time full of apologies, then in the next breath blaming her, twisting his words until she didn’t know up from down or left from right. Convinced it was her fault and cowed by his threats, she’d stopped seeing her friends and avoided her family as she became a master at using body makeup to conceal her bruises.
It had taken her years to work up the courage to leave, squirreling a little of the money he allowed her away into a secret bank account. Her grandfather dying and leaving her the Starflame was the catalyst she needed. She’d left the same night and filed divorce papers against him.
“You little bitch!”
Jason’s face appeared on screen, twisted into a familiar mask of anger. Every part of her body tensed, ready to flee. She recognized the look in his eyes, the rage and hatred a precursor to taking his frustrations out with his fists. He’d been drinking as well, the high flush on his cheeks a warning sign she’d learnt to heed.
“You’re sleeping with that f**king judge, aren’t you?” He was in his office, the logo on the wall behind him familiar. “Got him wrapped around your little finger so he’d do what you wanted in the hearing. Dirty little slut. How’d you do him to get the ship? On his desk while the dried up old prune was still in his robes?”
She winced, trying to hide the movement even though he couldn’t see her. A habit she’d yet to break. She’d learnt never to show fear, it just made him worse. Yelling and screaming until his fists started to fly.
Taking a large swallow from the glass by his side, he leaned in as though he could see her right through the screen. “That ship is mine, bitch. For putting up with your pathetic moods during our marriage.”
His lips curled into a sneer.
“After all, I need some compensation for having to f**k a frigid, barren little bitch like you. If your grandfather hadn’t been who he was, you think I’d have ever bothered with you?” He laughed, the sound harsh and derisive before he turned serious and gave her a chilling look. “I want my ship, Milly, and no matter what some pansy-assed judge says, I’m going to get it.”
The connections had to be bad.
Johnny paused for a moment, squinted inside the torso panel of the android he was working on, frowned and upped the magnification in his ocular implant to check the wiring out. Yeah, he was right. The cellular connections in the upper portion were badly connected which meant that the current was only getting through to the left arm of this model sporadically, making it jerk as if it was a maniacal puppet on a string. Funny, until it had thrown carrot soup over the client. What the client had a sexbot doing with carrot soup Johnny didn’t want to know.
“So what was with last night?” The query was light, the voice feminine and absentminded. It was also a trap. He knew it was a trap. It didn’t stop him getting sucked in.
“Last night?”
He arched an eyebrow and carried on working as his partner in crime, Cyn, plunked down on the stool next to him. She peered inside the open front of the android and grunted in approval at his neat cellular resoldering. At least he assumed the grunt was approval anyway. If he wasn’t working to her standards, Cyn had no problems with slapping him around the back of the head and doing the job herself.