Ravager's Redemption (The Argadian Heart Book 3) Read online

  Suddenly, he reached out to grab her hand, drew it to his face, and he inhaled. His gaze again met hers.

  “Nice,” he said in a deep, gravelly voice. “I’m only here for a short time, but I definitely think we should become intimately acquainted.”

  Daelyn studied him closely and knew she teetered at the edge of danger. Having been an assassin for the Tribunal for many years, her responses shocked her in that for the first time she felt female. He made her feel every bit of the femininity that should have been doused inside her, made her respond to him.

  He was dangerous, his name obviously earned. Not only was he capable of ravaging the skies, but obviously female hearts as well.

  The Tribunal was right, he must be eliminated. His seductive aura was a threat to the order of things on Argadia. His lethal charm contained the ability to seduce the secrets from any female he encountered who had the least bit of knowledge of the Tribunal’s activities. Alekos Andromeda, the Ravager, was a lone wolf who followed no rules, a treacherous stud who used his skills as well as any Enforcer ever had with lethal purpose.

  But before she eliminated him, she wanted one taste of him so she would always be reminded the Nanus process was not infallible—even an Enforcer’s suppressed emotions could be seduced from hiding.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Alekos’ whole body ached like it was one huge bruise. The chains imprisoning him rattled as he attempted to shift to a more comfortable position in the small cell he had been thrown into.

  Rage shot through him at the knowledge a traitor had given him up. He knew there was a hefty price on his head, but had there been some sort of added incentive that would make one of his own crew turn on him? Carefully settling back against the stone wall of his prison, he wondered if his death would be quick or slow?

  Probably slow and painful—as painful as they could make it. But at least he’d given the Tribunal a run for its money and managed to catch them with their pants down on more than one occasion. He would have liked to do more.

  Reaching up, Alekos repositioned the black leather patch over his right eye, remembering who and how he’d been wounded. Another traitor after the reward on his head.

  All these years he’d remained alone, never trusting anyone, not since the moment he’d left his family and struck out to fight against the Tribunal in his own way. Youth mingled with rage and reinforced with the feeling of impotence in being unable to help his family had driven him in those early years.

  First, his brother had been taken and transformed into an Enforcer. His father had turned rebel and been assassinated, and then his sister taken and sold into bondage. And he was too young back then to help any of them. His mother had managed to spirit him away to safety with the help of others in the rebellion.

  As Alekos grew older, he’d felt stifled, impotent to help his family, unable to ease his mother’s sorrow. The final blow was when Eluria Zydon freed his sister from Odon’s domination. Then the rage inside him boiled over and practically destroyed him.

  Kierra returned a broken woman, ravaged by the Tribunal. It was strictly through her link with the Serdionese Mindwanderer, Jarek Bakari, that she was able to hold on to even a thread of sanity. But to watch her try to cope with her nightmares, unable to be touched by anyone, even those who loved her most, was too much for him. It tore him apart to feel so helpless.

  So many innocent lives ravaged and destroyed by the Tribunal—how could he do other than attempt to destroy as many as possible himself?

  Even Eluria, whose father was one of the Tribunal Leaders, had turned rebel. Eluria, who loved his older brother, Devon, and been devastated when he was taken to serve as an Enforcer, had joined the Freelions. At first she had found ways to pass information by becoming a Twilight Companion. After his father’s death she had embraced the rebellion openly and become a fighter.

  Seeing the pain in her eyes as Eluria waited for a serum, some antidote, to be developed that would destroy the hated Nanus block that helped to create the assassins feared by the whole planet of Argadia, Alekos could not simply stand by and do nothing.

  He couldn’t watch any longer, surrounded by so much pain. Once Alekos was old enough to handle himself, training in secret, he left, needing to find his own way to fight the stranglehold of the Tribunal.

  Discovering a small abandoned ship, he refurbished it, and struck out on his own. Small things at first, a gnat of aggravation on the ass of the Tribunal. Luck in a card game garnered him a much sturdier ship and he was able to acquire a small crew. Attacking supply ships and those that carried prisoners became his sole purpose. Time after time he took deadly risks—and won.

  Alekos christened his ship the Ravager, because he meant to do to the Tribunal what they had done to his people, his family. He would never let up, not until the day he died.

  Sighing, he leaned back. It looked like today might be the day. He was curious what was taking them so long. When he’d been taken by the Enforcers, he’d fully expected to be strung up there and then. But instead they’d stripped him of his weapons, took him back to Zydon’s compound, and threw him in this cell. As far as he could figure, he’d been there two days and no one had come for him. A plate of food and drink was slipped through the panel at the bottom of the door on occasion, but that was about the only contact he was allowed with anyone.

  This type of silence and solitude, time for introspection, was something he didn’t enjoy. It meant the memories, the nightmares returned with ruthless clarity.

  For some reason it was never the good memories, the time before the Tribunal destroyed his family. All he could see in his mind was the pain in his mother’s eyes, the fear in Kierra’s, and the ghost-like guilty determination in Eluria.

  Eluria had put her life on the line time and time again in an attempt to recover his family. Her guilt was totally misplaced, but no one seemed to be able to dissuade her. She drove herself day after day in an effort to repair the wounds her father had wrought.

  Commander Clorial Zydon tore his family apart because he wanted his daughter to create union with the son of Odon, one of the other Tribunal members. Zydon was the one who had Devon taken from his family to be turned into an Enforcer. When Eluria found out the truth, she took steps to subvert his machinations. She chained the ghost of Devon and his family inside her, determined to find a way to help them, and nothing anyone said could alter her frame of mind.

  He couldn’t stay there with them on Ednos. He needed to break out on his own, find his own way to fight. And Alekos had never regretted doing just that.

  Twice he’d been betrayed. This time would probably be the last. Enforcers had killed his crew without mercy, but not him.

  Tribunal Enforcers, creatures with no emotion, living, breathing killing machines who served at the order of the Tribunal without thought.

  Alekos didn’t want to think about that other time. Yet it had served to teach him not to let his guard down for even an instant, particularly in the company of a beautiful woman. They could be the most lethal. He raised a hand to touch the patch over his eye.

  She was an Enforcer and had used her body with expert precision, making him want her, crave to possess her. Alekos couldn’t recall being tempted in quite the same way by any other woman he’d met over the years.

  He’d been in Dhothvar to enjoy himself for a couple of days while his ship underwent routine maintenance. The last battle had been a particularly fierce one and he’d lost one of his crew. He was also scouting for a new crew member. The criminal colony was about the best place to locate the type of person he required.

  Trying to pass the time, he had sat down at a game of poker. About an hour into the game, she had walked into the bar and all his senses shot into alert.

  He should have listened to his instincts. The female seemed out of place in an environment like that, but she sauntered in and sat at a table in a dark corner, ordering a bottle of expensive wine. Another hour passed and his gaze was drawn to her more often than
it should have been, until finally, his khout throbbing against his leg, Alekos had risen from the table. Picking up his winnings, he left the game and walked over to her table.

  He saw the invitation in her odd colored eyes. Thinking back, he should have questioned the color at the time, but by then it was his stiff khout doing the thinking, not his brain.

  Even now Akelos smiled bitterly. She certainly was a consummate actress. For someone with no emotion, she had mimicked her desire for him well. After finishing off the bottle of wine, he invited her up to his room and with just a brief, perfect chasm of hesitation, she agreed.

  Haydon, she had been good. He’d never suspected her for a moment. And he had wanted her with every fiber in his body. He remembered closing the door to his room, then turning to face her. She had stood at the center of the small room and as her gaze met his, she slowly peeled the dress from her body, exposing her lush curves to him.

  Hazily, the thought had come to him she might be a pleasure worker, but then as the dress dropped to the floor, any other coherent considerations but the naked female standing before him flew from his brain.

  His khout had stiffened even more than it was earlier and he had been so damned eager to sink it into her tender flesh. She wore no undergarments, her breasts were perfectly proportioned, nipples tight, blushing orbs. And with those wicked weapons strapped to her legs, and nothing else, Haydon, she’d been the most beautiful thing he’d seen in a very long time.

  Focused on him, she had raised her hands to cup her breasts, stroking a long finger over their surface and licking her crimson lips. As if that was not enough, she slowly slid her hands downward over her ribcage, across her flat, tight abdomen toward the shadowed vee between her legs.

  He could see the sheen of her passion on her shax lips. Two of her fingers disappeared between her lips and she undulated her narrow hips, widening her stance. The only items she still wore were the little gold diffuser strapped to one leg and the dagger strapped to the other.

  Alekos should have known from that alone that she was trouble. But by then, it was too late, and his body had taken over the process of thinking. In fact, he found the sight of the weapons’ lethal presence erotically arousing.

  If he could have wished his clothes gone right then he would have. Instead he quickly stripped, unable to take his eyes off her as she fucked herself with her fingers, driving his sexual heat higher and higher, his khout so hard he couldn’t think straight even if he’d wanted to.

  Walking over to stand in front of her, she had lifted her fingers to his mouth. And damned, if he hadn’t sucked at them eagerly, enjoying the taste of her cream. Lifting a hand, he’d separated her fingers and slowly licked along the length of each one, then sucked them deep inside his mouth.

  Her breaths had quickened, and he could have sworn she’d felt the same arousal he had, but Alekos now knew he was more than wrong about that assumption.

  He’d pushed her back toward the bed and she’d fallen upon it, legs splayed, revealing her sex to him, urging him. He remembered standing over her, drinking in her sensual scent. Why had he not questioned when no radiance of sexual arousal glowed? He should have. With any other Argadian female the crimson radiance should have been vibrating, a sure sign of her desire.

  But he was so far gone by then, it never even occurred to him to question it and he’d dropped over her without another thought, a male beyond eager to quench his thirst with her body.

  Crushing her beneath him, feeling her warm flesh against his, it was all he could do to hold onto his self-control. He’d raised up on his forearms and looked down at her, not wanting to wait another moment to claim her. But he had to make sure she understood the rules. He wanted her, but he was not planning to make a lifelong union.

  “Sex, not sealing,” he’d growled.

  He remembered thinking there was something about her eyes, or rather now that he thought about it, there was not something. He’d thought at the time she might be only half Argadian and that accounted for it. He found out a short time later that was not the case at all.

  She nodded. “Fuck me. We can talk later.”

  Alekos hadn’t needed a second invitation. Flipping her onto her stomach, he rubbed his khout against her engorged lips and heard her moan. He’d stroked along her back with his tongue and gripping her wrists, he’d anchored her to the bed. He couldn’t wait to feel her surround him with her moist, hot flesh. That was the only thing in his mind as his khout separated her lips, poised to penetrate.

  Suddenly, Alekos had found himself on his back, the fucking little gold diffuser pressed to his neck, and she was straddled across his body. But it was when she yanked off the wig and he saw the signature white hair that he knew he was surely fucked. It was then lust turned to fury for her deception.

  Alekos didn’t give up that easily. A triumphant expression had spread across her face, and it was then, without warning, he bucked, throwing her to the floor. His own weapon was near his pants, lying on the floor near the door. Idiot! He knew better than to trust anyone. Why in Haydon did he let his guard down with this one?

  Scrambling across the floor, Alekos had hoped for just enough time to reach his weapon. Making to the diffuser, he grabbed it and rolled to his back just as a blast struck him in the face, the searing pain, and blurred vision leaving him gasping for breath.

  Fighting past the agony, he vaguely remembered her standing over him, staring down at him, the tiny gold diffuser pointed at his chest. It aggravated him that the excruciating pain in his face was threaded with a hint of arousal. Then he had blanked out.

  Alekos had awoken in bed, his face covered in bandages, but surprisingly, he was still alive. He lost the vision in one eye and the right side of his face was riddled with scars, but he was still breathing.

  He asked himself repeatedly why she’d chosen to spare him? Obviously, she had been sent to kill him, and she was able to get under his defenses all too easily. Her face was etched in his memory and with every Enforcer encounter he found himself searching for her.

  Alekos knew the day would come and then he would exact his revenge. She’d meant to assassinate him—he’d sensed her determination to do so—right until he’d blacked out. Had she been interrupted?

  Shrugging, he stretched as far as the chains would allow. He expected he would never have the answers now.

  The iron door creaked open and Alekos straightened, pulled from his uneasy thoughts. Haydon, anything to break the tedium. Surprise streaked through him as a body was heaved into the room to land several feet away.

  The white hair caught his attention first. An Enforcer? What was he doing here?

  Once the door closed and Alekos heard the sound of the lock clamping into place, he crawled over to the unconscious form. Turning the Enforcer over, Alekos fell back in shock.

  Shirtless, bloody and bruised, the evidence of unusual markings could still be seen on his chest. Alekos’ gaze slid over the body, down his arms, and he saw another band of markings on his wrist.

  Alekos’ heart pounded as he again studied the face, noting the familiar, yet more mature demeanor. He fell back against the wall. Fuck! At least now Alekos knew why they kept him alive.

  “Haydon! You bastard.” Impotent rage filled him.

  He had been used as a decoy to lure his brother, Devon. And obviously it had worked. It would not be long before they were both dead. And it was his fault.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “I shouldn’t have let him undertake the mission on his own.” Eluria’s words spoke of raw emotion. “I should have been with him.”

  Daelyn saw Kierra’s arms tighten around Eluria’s shoulders, trying to offer her own strength and comfort. “If you had been there, you would have been captured as well. You know that. And you would all be dead right now.

  “It was a trap,” Jarek Bakari said from the other side of the table. “They knew he’d attempt to rescue his brother.”

  Daelyn watched this family, torn apart
with the news that not only Alekos was prisoner, but now Devon as well.

  Eluria pulled out of Kierra’s embrace and glared at Jarek. “There is a traitor in our midst. How else would they have known Devon was on the planet? Tell me how they could have identified the exact location of the ship when it was cloaked?” She slammed her fist on the table. “Haydon! This should not have happened. I’ve slipped within our enemy’s midst more times than I can count and never been detected. Never!”

  Jarek sighed. “We’ve already surmised that, Eluria. A team is preparing for departure as we speak.”

  “No, I will not leave their lives in other’s hands. I am going in,” she announced.

  Daelyn saw the shocked look in Kierra’s eyes. “You cannot, Eluria.”

  Eluria spun around to glare at her. “He’s my taman. We are bound and I will be certain there are no mistakes.”

  “That’s not what I mean and you know it.” Daelyn saw Kierra’s gaze slip down over Eluria’s body, zeroing in on her abdomen. “You risk too much, you know that.” Her words were softly spoken, but Daelyn heard them.

  She knew Kierra was working on an antidote to the Nanus block that had been used on Eluria when she was a twilight companion—it was a process that prevented her from creating offspring. Eluria had confided in Daelyn that she’d never expected to be with Devon and now she regretted the fact she could never offer him Beyond because of her choice.

  Since Devon’s return, Kierra had worked tirelessly on the antidote, and Daelyn now surmised that maybe she’d been successful.

  “I will go,” she blurted out. Guilt weighed on her for her failure in volunteering for the mission in the first place. But given any other choice, facing Alekos Andromeda was something she would avert if possible, for as long as possible. Apparently that was not to be.