Deadly Pleasure: 2 (Mercy) Read online

  Deadly Pleasure

  Lexxie Couper

  Mercy, Book Two

  No one on Spaceport Mercy knows who Corvan Jareth really is. Everything about the bouncer at The Steam, the port’s most popular bar, is shrouded in mystery. The only certainty—don’t piss him off if you value your limbs. And definitely don’t mess with Emylie, his equally mysterious companion, if you value your life. That’s all anyone knows, and that’s the way Corvan likes it.

  So who’s the woman in skintight red leather who suddenly appears on Port Mercy? The one with the massive partner known only as Forty-Two? The one asking questions about the secretive bouncer? And why do her eyes burn with familiar hunger when she finally finds him?

  Corvan Jareth’s dark past is about to catch up with him. And it couldn’t be more dangerous. Or erotic.

  A Romantica® sci-fi erotic romance from Ellora’s Cave

  Deadly Pleasure

  Lexxie Couper

  Prologue

  Galactic Union Covert-Ops Compound, Batrium Nuun’r Prime

  Galactic Union Calendar 208

  “Didn’t your mother tell you it’s rude to fuck and leave?”

  Unit Zero Agent Proserpina glared at the man who was her mentor and lover—as well as an efficiently lethal killer. Watching him shove long, corded legs and his very impressive cock into a pair of Ezilian leather combat trousers made her shift on the tangled sheets. His cum trickled slickly over the inside curve of her thigh, making her sex constrict and her heart thump.

  He lifted his gaze from the strafer now in his hands and his piercing eyes made her pussy squeeze again. “I didn’t have a mother. I do have a new target.”

  His deep voice—calm and completely composed—stroked the silence of the small room. Pulse leaping into wild life, Proserpina scrambled upright. “Alone? Without me? What about my training?”

  His silver stare dropped back to the strafer, sure fingers checking the weapon’s complicated charging system with blurring ease. “Your training is complete. You’re now the second-best assassin in the GU. Probably the second best in the known systems.”

  Proserpina’s throat grew tight. “Second best?”

  One of her mentor’s exceptionally rare grins curled the sides of his mouth. “After me. You’re not that good.”

  He slid the strafer into its holster on his right thigh, and not for the first time since knowing him, Proserpina found herself unnerved. When had he strapped the holster around his leg?

  She’d fought like a demon to be assigned his student upon being recruited by Unit Zero. More than one night had been spent spitting up blood, tending her injuries after a workout in the Galactic Union assassination division’s holo-dojo, wondering if she’d lost her mind, if it was all worth it.

  What had kept her going through each and every brutal, bloody training session the computer created was the knowledge she was being watched. She’d felt eyes on her every time, studying her form, her technique, noting how she handled each broken bone, how swiftly she dealt punishment to every simulated attacker. Every session, as she swallowed her blood, sweat and pain, she prayed those eyes belonged to Unit Zero’s most mysterious, deadly and feared agent.

  Code name—Thanatos.

  Little was known about him, other than when he was assigned a target, said target was dead within the cycle, regardless of who it was, how untouchable the target was supposed to be.

  Sixty days into her training, after she’d shed more blood and killed more simulated targets than she’d believed possible, Thanatos himself had appeared in the dojo. His massive frame radiating an icy menace that had made her gut churn.

  Silver eyes raked over her, marking her. Noting her scars and sweat. Making her heart thump with hope and her cunt constrict with an excitement she’d never experienced before. She’d met his silent stare through the tangled mess of her hair, dragging one ragged breath after another through her nose, her blood roaring in her ears, her body burning with adrenaline.

  Jaw clenched, she’d lifted her chin, daring him to break the silence.

  He hadn’t. Instead, with a barely perceptible nod, he’d left.

  The dojo had shimmered around her, the training program she’d spent weeks in replaced by what could only be described as a torture arena, with weapons of every kind imaginable hanging on the walls. Waiting to be used.

  Before she’d had the chance to draw breath, he’d leapt at her, seemingly materializing out of the arena’s shadows, smashing her against the wall even as his fist smashed against her jaw.

  And so her true training began.

  Over time he’d broken her, torn down her weaknesses, destroyed her inhibitions. Educated her on every possible way to extinguish a life—up close or from a distance. Taught her how to control every emotion she had, every fear, every thought. He’d remade her, sculpted her, molded her into an image after his own likeness.

  Turned her into a killing machine.

  She’d grown to hate him with every minute of each training day. Despise him. Loathe him and wish him dead—as much as she’d grown to revere and respect him.

  Almost as powerfully as she’d grown to lust after him.

  He practically owned her. He’d tortured her, humiliated her, viewed her naked vulnerability with the same flat, emotionally detached eyes that gazed upon her naked body. Yes, his hands had brought more pain than all her holo sessions combined. But the rare flashes of approval in his usually unreadable eyes had bolstered her pride and sense of self-worth.

  He’d taken the unrelenting shame of her childhood—the parentless existence in a GU refugee compound where she’d barely survived, scavenging whatever she could barter, including her once-innocent body—and turned it into a poised, detached resolve more solid than the Five Moons of Maylaria.

  He’d done all that and more, but not once had he ever done what she so deeply, secretly, desperately wanted him to do.

  Fuck her. Claim her.

  Until tonight.

  Tonight, he’d walked into her cubicle, torn her vest open and thrown her onto the bed.

  One orgasm so powerful she’d felt sure her heart would stop. One mind-blowing, body-crushing, explosive taste of his mastery. It wasn’t enough.

  She feared it never would be.

  And now he was leaving.

  Proserpina studied him, letting her gaze skim over the chest both harder than baridium steel and smoother than Zondarian velvet, over the stomach muscles her tongue and lips had caressed only moments earlier. “But I always go with you.”

  She mentally cringed at the whiny tone in her voice. Gods, she was a UZ assassin, not a desperate, clingy female. What in the name of all the hells was she doing?

  Silver eyes studied her as he shrugged into a heavy and well-worn black leather jacket, the pockets of which Proserpina knew contained at least five weapons of death. “As I said—your training is done, Proserpina. You’re now a professional killer.”

  She swallowed. Not just at the use of her code name, an ancient Terran name he’d assigned her after she’d survived the first week of his training, but at the smoldering desire she saw still burning in his normally unreadable eyes. Her pussy constricted and her breath grew short. He might be going on a mission, but he wanted to fuck her again.

  “Yes. I am,” she said, holding his stare.

  The corners of his mouth twitched a little as he lifted his neutralizer from the room’s com-desk and slipped it into the waistband at the small of his back. “You told me once you knew how to make an Itillian Slap.” He deactivated the door’s locking mechanism and stepped into the empty corridor. “Killing’s thirsty work. I’m pretty certain I’ll be needing that drink when I get back.”

  The door sli
d closed between them, blocking Thanatos from Proserpina’s sight.

  She sat motionless, listening to the thick silence of her quarters, imagining his passage down the corridor, his massive frame dominating the narrow space, his finely tuned muscles coiling and flexing with each step.

  He was gone. He’d left her and she didn’t know when she’d see him again. Or when she’d get the chance to make him that—

  The glum thought faded away and a grin split Proserpina’s face. Itillian Slap.

  He’d requested an Itillian Slap.

  The highly illegal and very potent aphrodisiac used by sexual partners to stimulate all the body’s senses during copulation.

  Wriggling on the bed, she took a deep breath, letting the musky scent of their passion seep into her being. He wanted to fuck her again. When he got back from the mission, he wanted to fuck her again.

  Feeling for the first time in her life like a real woman, she threw up her arms and dropped backward onto the tangled sheets, grinning widely.

  “I’ll make you an Itillian Slap, Unit Zero Agent Thanatos. And after you drink it, I’m going to show you why you named me Proserpina, the ancient Terran goddess of birth-death-rebirth.”

  She wriggled some more on the sheets, breathing in the trainer, mentor and all-around lethal killer’s distinct, addictive scent.

  “You may have created the second-best assassin in the known systems,” she stated, smiling at the ceiling and seeing Thanatos in her mind, “but I bet I’m the best lover you’ve ever had. I don’t want to be on my own anymore, and the look in your eyes told me you don’t either.” She let her fingers dance over her pebbled nipples, down the flat plane of her stomach to the throbbing button hidden between the folds of her still-damp sex. “Which means it’s time for you to experience a rebirth of your own.”

  She closed her eyes and slipped her fingers into her sodden pussy. “When you get back, your true training will begin.”

  Chapter One

  The Steam, Spaceport Mercy

  Galactic Union Calendar 211

  “Who’s goin’ t’make me?”

  Corvan Jareth suppressed a sigh, his stare fixed on the inebriated, slightly swaying Mendovian waving a broken bottle in his face.

  Every time a new ship docked, every time a new smuggler, illegal trader or bounty hunter landed on Port Mercy, he had to deal with at least one idiot too intoxicated to realize they were about to get their nose or muzzle or snout broken.

  Tonight was no exception. The Mendovian with the broken bottle and twitching eye stalks had spent the better part of the evening—and a shitload of credits—pouring ale after ale down his throat and boasting to anyone who cared to listen about the haul of Ezilian Dream Spice he’d just snatched from under the GU’s nose.

  And also mauling the bok’i spin table girls, groping the bar staff and hurling insults at Koftii’s karaoke rendition of the Zondarian hit Whip Me.

  As far as Corvan was concerned, the drunken imbecile should have been ejected from the bar after his second drink, but Rejelle—being a big fan of pissing off the Galactic Union—had given the smuggler a little more slack than usual.

  That was, at least, until he’d tried to stick one of his tongues down her throat.

  “So?” The Mendovian snarled, growing less inebriated and more controlled with each wavering jab of the broken bottle. “Ya goin’ t’answer me? Who’s goin’ t’make me leave? You?”

  Corvan nodded. Once. “Yes.”

  Then he moved.

  At the exact second the Mendovian lunged at him.

  Mendovians are fast. Corvan was faster. He always was. His fist smashed into the smuggler’s ample gut, knuckles punching into a thick layer of winter fat and stopping at a wall of solid muscle. The Mendovian let out a choked “oomph,” a sound of both pain and surprise. He doubled over deeply, as if attempting to smack his own forehead against his knees.

  Corvan readied to deliver another blow if needed. It rarely was. Once opponents realized how quick he was, they usually scurried out of the bar, tattered pride dragging behind them.

  Something about this opponent, however, kept Corvan more on guard. Alert.

  The bar fell silent, all eyes on the stooped smuggler. A mild air of dread and excitement thrummed through the gawking crowd. The regulars shuffled their feet, casting Corvan knowing looks. They’d seen him fold more than one difficult patron in half and most likely suspected they were going to see it again tonight. Koftii skittered off the stage, tail swishing, ears flat, deserting her beloved karaoke for the safety of wherever it was the Felinia escaped to when things in The Steam got ugly.

  Corvan stared at the back of the Mendovian’s head, muscles coiled. Ready. “Don’t do it,” he said. Calm. Composed.

  Twin eyestalks twitched. Wide shoulders bunched under the Mendovian’s heavy flight jacket.

  Corvan ground his teeth—ah, fuck—and swung his fist, connecting with the smuggler’s jaw the precise moment the Mendovian leapt up from his stoop to charge him.

  A loud gasp filled the bar.

  A flash of blinding light erupted somewhere to his left.

  Corvan bit back a curse. Fuck. Itia Va and her smartcam. His image would be in the Mercy Watcher for a week.

  The Mendovian’s body arced backward, eyestalks flapping, arms flailing. He hit the floor with a thud, the impact sending a shock wave of dull vibrations up Corvan’s legs. Some SOB foolishly burst into applause, Va’s smartcam flashed again and Koftii’s crooning tones wafted from the karaoke stage once more.

  Corvan shook his head, giving the still and decidedly unconscious Mendovian an indifferent look. Lifting his head, he ignored the sight of the petite but determined Va cutting a path through the crowd toward him and nodded at one of his crew. Diirch detached himself from the writhing mass of patrons on the dance floor and hurried over.

  “Get rid of him,” Corvan said, not looking at the motionless Mendovian on the floor. “Put him back on his vessel and arrange for a doc to mend his ribs. I’m pretty certain I broke at least two.”

  Diirch smirked. “Only two? You feeling soft t’night, Boss?”

  Corvan gave the Doirnn, one of the bar’s wittier bouncers, a level stare.

  Diirch grinned. “Gotcha, Boss. Doing it now. Charging the doc’s bill to the usual account?”

  Corvan nodded, turning back to the bar. It was late, and he wanted to—

  “Another patron reluctant to leave, Jareth?” The reporter for the Mercy Watcher blocked his path, smartcam zeroing in on his face like a striking serpent. “You dealt with him a little harsher than normal. And faster. Care to offer a quote for the story?”

  Corvan met the woman’s intense stare. Itia Va had been after his “story” since the moment he’d arrived on the spaceport. The fact she’d been unable to dig up anything annoyed the shit out of her. It was almost enough to make Corvan smile—if he didn’t know just how good she was at her job. Her tenacity made him wary.

  Thankfully, she hadn’t questioned him too much about Emylie. So far. Perhaps because, despite her dogged journalist’s mind, she’d recognized the threat in his eyes the one time she’d dared mention Emylie’s name.

  She licked her lips, a pugnacious light in her brilliant blue eyes. “Steam Bouncer or Steam Brutalizer? It’s a catchy title, don’t you think?”

  Corvan clenched his fists. He didn’t need this right now. He just wanted to finish his shift and—

  “Or maybe I should run with, Corvan Jareth. The Man with No Past Strikes Again?”

  “Itia.” Port Mercy Security Commander Kassandra Scott suddenly appeared beside the reporter, towering over her. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about the Slessorian article in last week’s Watcher.”

  Va turned to Scott, irritation mingled with suspicion crossing her face.

  The security commander flicked Corvan a quick look—you owe me—before taking Va’s elbow in her grip and turning the reporter away from him.

  Corvan ground his teeth harder. K
assandra Scott was a brilliant security officer. She knew as little about him as Va did, but until recently hadn’t seemed bothered by the fact. Apart from offering him a job on her team when he’d first arrived, an offer he’d refused, she’d left him alone. She also kept any images of him, or stories Va wrote about him, off the GU sub-space info-link ether. He didn’t know how—Kassandra Scott had her own secrets, it seemed—but whenever Va threatened to make him a feature of her reporting skills, Scott intercepted.

  He knew, however, that she kept an eye on him. Someone his size with his obvious skills was never going to pass under her radar, but that was all it seemed to be—a professional eye. If he’d known she was in The Steam tonight, he would have been a bit slower dealing with the Mendovian.

  Port Security Commander Kassandra Scott wouldn’t have missed how preternaturally fast his strikes were. To be honest, no one would have. Curse it.

  This is what he got for losing his focus.

  And if you lose your focus, Emylie could end up dead.

  The unbidden thought sent a chilling tension straight through his chest.

  Stepping over to the main bar, mindless of the customers almost stumbling out of his way, he flagged Rejelle’s attention. “I’m finished for the night,” he said, his voice carrying over Koftii’s drawling rendition of the Old Earth classic, What’s New, Pussycat? “Priirj and L’wxan are on ’til close.”

  Rejelle gave him a small smile and nodded, her eyes warm and understanding. “Give her my love.”

  Corvan felt the sides of his mouth curl in a rare smile. He returned Rejelle’s nod before weaving through the crowd and exiting The Steam.

  A cacophony of sound hit him. People shouting, laughing, screaming. Felinia hissing at those passing too close to them, claws scraping the cold metal floors. The catcalls and moans from Blow Job Alley, the chimes of the bok’i dens, the goading insults from the slave auctions. Nighttime on Spaceport Mercy. A symphony he’d grown accustomed to quite quickly.