No Mercy Read online

  “It might not be enough.”

  “It is what it is.” Securing the harness around them both, Zan waited for her signal. Gravity had snared them and Gia fought it as best she could, angling the ship at a smoother angle. He waited, holding her, perversely glad that if he was going to die, he wasn’t doing it alone.

  “Now!” Gia shouted, throwing her arms over her head.

  Zan yanked the lever. The hull seemed to fall apart around them as they hurtled into the storm. Up they went as the ship continued plunging to the world. They lost sight of it, but the sound of impact carried up to where they hovered.

  And then gravity, that jealous mistress, clasped them in her hand once more.

  “What’s wrong?” Gia shouted to be heard above the howling wind. “Why isn’t the rocket reserve coming up?”

  “It must have flash frozen!” Zan called out.

  Icy pellets smacked into them; it seemed to be snowing from the ground up. Just when he was sure they really were going to die this time, the chair jerked.

  “What the hell?”

  They both looked up to see a huge fabric canopy in bright orange catching the wind above them, slowing their descent.

  He looked from the billowing fabric to Gia’s face. “What is that?”

  She smiled into his eyes. “My ace in the hole—an old-fashioned parachute.”

  He grinned back. “You could have told me about it.”

  She shrugged and snuggled closer to him, probably attempting to conserve body heat against the bitter cold, not show affection. “There wasn’t time.”

  She was right. The entire crash landing had taken no more than ten minutes. Zan felt as though he’d aged another century.

  With nothing else to do, they drifted down. Occasionally a gust of wind would blow them up and well off course, but the parachute held strong. When the chair finally landed, it was at the base of a mountain. The arctic lake was nowhere in sight.

  “We need to find shelter, fast,” Zan said as Gia unfastened the harness. “Without the proper equipment, we won’t last long in this.”

  Gia opened her pack and started rooting through it. She offered him a small vial of purple gel. “Here, drink this.”

  He eyeballed it warily. “What the hell is it?”

  “Nutrition supplement. It also has a temporary warming agent. Like meals ready to eat.”

  Zan glanced from her to the vial and back again. Her mouth fell open. “You don’t trust me!”

  “I don’t trust anybody.” It was the truth, but for the first time he felt a twinge of remorse over that fact.

  The gears were churning in her mind. He could see it in her jerky movements as she pulled a blanket from her pack, along with an extra pair of socks, which she pulled on her hands to act as gloves. “We don’t have time for this. Drink it or don’t, but I’m planning to live for a little while longer yet and I’m not going to stand around here arguing with your dumb ass.”

  Zan stared down at the vial. The cold was starting to burn where it touched his bare skin. Hell with it, he’d already made one leap of faith today, why not another?

  Gia didn’t comment as he drank the foul concoction. She was too busy going through his pack, digging out a blanket and socks for him. “Try to keep your skin covered as much as possible. I don’t have anything to treat frostbite.” She downed her own vial of purple gunk, packed up the parachute, and set off.

  “How do you know which way to go?” Zan shouted as he followed her.

  She glanced over at him. “I don’t. But we have to go somewhere, right?”

  Zan shook his head but followed her just the same.

  The unrelenting cold chased them along the base of the mountain. Zan shivered, grateful for the blanket, for the fact that she had told him about the survival packs and that he’d had enough time to retrieve them. She really wasn’t all bad. He kept wondering, if he’d been the one kidnapped would he have saved his captor or left her for dead.

  Of course their continued survival might depend on sharing body heat with each other once they found shelter.

  If they found shelter. Big if.

  “We are in the Hosta System. Well beyond the explored territories,” Gia called out.

  Zan stopped.

  “I keep wondering how it could be possible. Hosta is thousands of light years from the empath’s home world. One second we were there and the next . . . Zan?” Gia noticed he wasn’t beside her anymore and rushed back to him.

  Zan stared down into her face, the pretty pilot who had saved his life, who knew his secrets. He wasn’t the sort of man to live with regrets, but if he could go back a few hours and tell himself to leave her the hell alone, he’d do it.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” Swaddled in her blanket with her flight goggles over her pretty green eyes she looked young, innocent. A victim he’d brought to be slaughtered.

  Swallowing past the lump in his throat he pushed the truth past chapped lips. “We’re going to die.”

  Gia shivered from more than the cold as she stared at Zan’s glazed-over expression. What had come over him? And more importantly, how could she snap him out of it before they both froze to death?

  She scanned the area, noticed an overhang where the snow was accumulating. The jutting side of the mountain would block the wind. “Come on, big guy, over here.”

  Zan didn’t fight her, didn’t even seem to notice her as she tugged him toward the nook. The flimsy shelter wasn’t much, but maybe if she hung the parachute from the ledge it would give them another layer of protection from the driving storm.

  “Zan, can you boost me up so I can secure the parachute around us?”

  No answer. She sighed, leaning back against the mountain, and fell on her ass as what she thought was a wall of snow and granite gave way.

  Her stunt had hauled Zan out of whatever trance he’d been in, and he was immediately at her side, laser pistol in hand. “What happened?”

  “You checked out on me,” she accused him. Now was not the time for either of them to take a mental health break, no matter how badly needed.

  Those dark eyebrows scrunched down as he stared at her. “What?”

  “You said we were going to die and then acted like a fracking statue, doing your damndest to make sure it happened!” She wished she could mask the edge of terror in her voice because it betrayed exactly how scared she’d been when she thought his mind had snapped.

  She waited for an accusing sneer, that expression of distain he had down to a practiced art. Instead he offered his hand—the one not holding the laser pistol—and waited for her to take it.

  It wasn’t an apology, but it was probably as close as he was going to come to one. She let him haul her up, then immediately pushed away, determined to keep her distance, because nothing good came from their close contact.

  Well, something good. Something verrrry good. The inner voice purred, reminding her of the heat she felt when their bodies were joined together in carnal embrace. His hard cock rubbing her in all the right places, the taste of him in her mouth, the seductive glint in his golden eyes as he thrust into her.

  She shivered, need still buried deep inside her, forced into the background by circumstances. Survival came first.

  Glancing around, she marveled at the cave, the mouth of which was once again filling with snow. “Let’s hang the parachute in front of it to keep the cave as dry as possible.”

  Gripping the other end, Zan secured the bright orange fabric at on corner, tying a knot around a stalagmite to keep it in place. Copying his example, Gia did the same.

  “That’s twice now that measly bit of cloth is going to save our lives,” Zan murmured.

  “I’m so glad I bucked conventional wisdom. I always insisted my ejector seat be equipped with a parachute. My flight school instructor said I was foolish worrying about a parachute, what with all the technology a stinger offered its pilot.” She didn’t want to think about her stinger, the fact that it was gone, broken apart at t
he bottom of some arctic lake on an alien world.

  “We owe our lives to your so-called stupidity, then,” Zan said.

  She smiled up at him, the first real smile she’d managed in what seemed to be ages. His gaze dropped to her lips, and she licked them. The sensation of cracks and dead skin was highly unpleasant, and she shucked off her pack. “I think I have some ChapStick in here somewhere.”

  Zan hovered over her a minute. “I’m going to see how far back this cave goes.”

  His footsteps receded, and Gia let out the nervous breath she’d been holding. God have mercy, Zan messed with her brain along with her body to an alarming degree. If she could still worry about what her lips would feel like sliding along his after all they’d been through in such a short time—an abduction, a crash landing, and then trekking across the frozen wasteland—then she had it bad for him. Too bad.

  Gia fought to remember her number one rule. Don’t become attached to the person you’re fucking. Sex created intimacy, and so did sharing experiences or pieces of yourself, like she had about the parachute. Lovers and friends must stay in their own separate categories. Otherwise attachment was inevitable, and she’d give too much power over to another human being. Ceding control and pretty much asking to be emotionally eviscerated in the process.

  Bad news, all the way around.

  So she had to either stop sharing sex with Zan or stop sharing secrets. Knowing herself and the effect celibacy had on her on the empath world, Gia made up her mind that she wouldn’t engage Zan in any more conversations. Though curiosity was gnawing at her to ask him what his statue act had been about, she wouldn’t give in to it. The only thing they needed to communicate about was how to survive and what would happen after they did.

  “Come see what I’ve found.” Zan had returned. “Bring your pack.”

  Though she wanted nothing more than to sleep for a few hours, Gia nodded. Arguing with him only got her blood pumping, and she was too tired for sex. “I hope it’s water. We don’t have any in the packs, and I feel as though I’m going to crumble into a pillar of salt.” Although that wasn’t too much of an issue. If they could find something to collect the snow in, let it melt, she could add a water-purification tablet that she had in her pack and they would be good to go.

  “Come see for yourself.” Again, Zan offered his hand, but having just committed herself to not encouraging any further intimacy with him, she ignored it. He stared at her, those sharp eagle eyes assessing her before he led her into the darkness.

  “I can’t see a damn thing!” Even the little bit of sunlight cutting through the storm and reflecting off the snow was better than this engulfing blackness.

  “The trail is plenty wide. Take my hand.” Zan didn’t wait for her to agree, just gripped her wrist and pulled her along.

  “You can see,” she realized. Honestly, why did it surprise her in the slightest? He was Zan, the mighty space pirate. He could probably walk on water too. She really had to get a drink soon because her thoughts were fixated on water

  “Yeah, I can see well enough. At least it’s not so dark in here. Wait until night truly falls. You won’t want to be moving around any then.”

  The feel of his hot, calloused hand engulfing hers combined with the dark was setting her teeth on edge. “How much farther?”

  “Just around the next bend.”

  And then she saw it, the unmistakable reflection of light glinting off water.

  With a joyous cry she ran for it, but Zan caught her by a belt loop. “Hang on a second; don’t you want to know if it’s safe, if there’s anything living in there before you go diving in?”

  She pointed to the steam rising up off the surface of the water. “See there? It’s fed from an underground freshwater spring. Not consistent enough to support life, it probably drains out every few days and takes forever to refill. We just got lucky.”

  Zan let go of her and folded his arms across his chest. “Guess that means you’re going for a dip.”

  Gia turned to face him, her energy renewed. “No, it means we’re going for a dip.”

  5

  The woman was exceptionally good at getting naked. Zan couldn’t believe how quickly she’d stripped off her grungy flight suit. He was still adjusting to the idea that she wanted him to come in the water with her after he’d essentially hijacked her life, then frozen up on her out in the snow like a virgin on a first date. The pale globes of her ass were sinking down into the pool, and the come hither invitation in her small smile as she watched him over her shoulder wasn’t the least bit shy.

  She was more than beautiful, she was also clever. He’d been admiring her resourcefulness ever since they’d found the cave. That and her feminine silhouette, the grace with which she moved, the twin dimples on her backside. Enjoying her was a much better way to spend his final hours than contemplating when they’d be found and executed.

  Thoughts of death didn’t affect his raging erection. His flesh was willing even as his brain scrambled to find a way out, climbing the smooth vertical walls of the mental trap.

  Hosta. Anywhere else in the frigging universe they might have stood a fighting chance. She was a quick thinker, and what with his skilled manipulations he felt confident that working together they could outfox almost anyone. Almost. If he’d known where they were headed he would have intentionally crashed the stinger into the side of a mountain and spared them hours of suffering, torture, and ultimately the most painful death Xander could envision.

  He should tell her. Gia deserved to know what was in store for them, that in trying to protect her from his enemies he’d bungled the situation and managed to drop them both into the cookpot. He opened his mouth, but his normal irreverent tone was nowhere to be found and he couldn’t seem to spit out the words “My father put a price on my head.”

  He considered and dismissed dozens of plans. Abandoning Gia wouldn’t save her. The second she was caught they’d torture her until she revealed his whereabouts. Or if he was captured first, she’d likely die of starvation. Those little vials of purple goo would only last so long, and here in the frozen Northlands there was no game to be caught, no help for thousands of miles. Only the military ventured this far north for training or to investigate any kind of disturbances picked up on the planet’s informational grid. Things like, oh, say, a crashing alien ship.

  Chances were good they were already being hunted. And her innocence, the fact that they barely knew each other, wouldn’t matter. He’d come inside her and some part of her now knew where the Infinity Pool was located. This was his worst nightmare come to life. He stuffed it deep down, unwilling to let his terror show.

  When she cast him a saucy wink over her shoulder, he decided he’d admired her from a distance long enough. Losing himself in her willing body, riding her hard until neither of them could hold a thought, seemed like the right course of action.

  Dropping his own pack he took his time divesting himself of his leathers. The sturdy clothing had held up better against the elements than Gia’s thin uniform, but neither of them would have made it this far without those thermal blankets. Bending down, he laid his blanket on a flat outcropping, with hers rolled up next to it. All ready to cocoon their naked bodies after their swim.

  “Are you planning to make me wait all day?” Gia asked as he splashed down into the pool.

  “So hungry for my cock, are you?”

  “Actually it’s your body heat I’m really interested in.”

  She was lying. He saw the devil in her eyes as she studied his hard shaft. He gripped it, showing her how he liked to stroke himself, and precum pearled at the tip. She licked her lips, the witch. No blush stained her cheeks as her hungry gaze practically devoured him. Though it was selfish as hell, Zan was relieved that since fate had brought him back here, at least she was here with him. He desperately needed the distraction she offered.

  “Lucky for you I’m willing to share both. Turn around.”

  She did, presenting him with h
er back once more. He pulled her flush against him, his cock nestling between her soft ass cheeks. She rocked back, a soft sigh encouraging him to take her, but he stilled her hips. “Let me wash you,” His cupped hands carried water up and let it spill over her shoulders. His eyes following the droplets over plump breasts, stiffened nipples and down further to the small indent of her belly button only to get lost in the tangle of golden curls that hid her sex from his hungry eyes. He did it again and she arched back into him, seeking a deeper contact.

  “I’ve been thinking I owe you an apology.” His hands skimmed down her slim arms, admiring the flawless texture of her soft skin. He followed each stroke with his eyes, taking in her natural biorhythm; her well-toned muscles; and her smooth, supple limbs, like those of a dancer. Learning her body so he could better please it.

  Under his ministrations Gia practically purred, “If you actually say you’re sorry for kidnapping me—”

  Nuzzling the tendon in her neck, he grinned. “Oh, hell, no. If I had it to do all over I’d probably do the exact same thing.”

  Her huff of indignation ended in a breathy moan as his fingers parted her nether lips with his index and ring finger, using the middle digit to stroke her clit.

  “No, what I’m regretting is that I didn’t take my time with you before. Your shielding was at the forefront of my mind, when it should have been you I was thinking on. It’s been so long since I’ve been able to fuck a woman freely, without considering the consequences.”

  She was up on her toes as he fondled her sex, her breath coming out in shallow pants. “You don’t expect me . . . to believe. . . you haven’t fucked your way across the galaxy.”

  He smiled against her silky blond locks, reading her body’s cues, to help her make the climb toward the summit. “Oh, I’ve done my share. But this damn knowledge, well, it’s not like I can just give it to every space station whore I cross paths with. No, I’ve learned to take my pleasure in other ways.” A glance at her face told him her eyes were shut, and he dipped lower, stroking her vulva.