Lost Star by Hawke, Morgan (digital book reader .TXT) 📕

dark chocolate eyes and pursed her full, sensual lips. “What would you prefer to be called?”

He held her gaze. “Ravnos will do.”

She blinked, then with a tilt of her head and a toss of her mass of red-gold curls that sent them tumbling over one shoulder, she slid her gaze out from under his and smiled brightly. “Very well then…” She lifted her chin, took a deep breath, lifting the ruffles of her pale gold low-necked blouse, which framed her full breasts to perfection.

“The captain tells me, Ravnos”—her sultry gaze met his for a brief instant—“that you seem to prefer your pleasure with a little pain added to the mix.”

He smiled sourly, folded his arms, and leaned back in the plush chair. “You could say that.” Stupid sex drive. He had no problems attracting lovers. He just couldn’t keep them. No one wanted a lover who simply couldn’t be gentle.

No one wanted a lover incapable of ever loving them in return, either.

She looked over at him and lifted a brow. “The captain also told me that if your needs are left too long unsatisfied, you become rather…destructive.”

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He winced and looked away. It seemed that someone had finally noticed his occasional bar brawls with off-duty marines. Probably because he kept winning them.

Stupid marines… With all the heavy-duty arm and leg augmentations marines had implanted, one would think they knew how to fight.

She tapped a perfectly manicured nail on the desktop. “Lethally destructive.”

He winced. Apparently, the sword duels he’d been participating in and sometimes instigating on random space stations hadn’t gone unnoticed either.

A soft, masculine voice whispered across his memory. “Sex or blood…”

She folded her hands together and smiled. “And so we come to why you are here.”

He lifted one dark brow. “The captain thinks I need a shrink?”

She shook her head. “I’m not a psychiatrist. I am a therapist, a sexual therapist.”

He choked on a laugh that wanted to be a scream. “Therapy can’t fix this.” He swallowed. “My aggression is…genetic.”

She rolled her eyes. “No one wants to fix you. You’re not broken. Trust me, I’ve seen broken, and you’re nothing like that.” She smiled. “I’m here to show you how to direct all that wonderful sexual aggression into safer channels.”

His brows lifted. Huh? He shook his head. “You don’t understand. I hurt people when I fuck them. In fact, I can’t seem to get off unless I cause them some kind of pain.”

She rose from her chair, revealing an extremely short and very tight skirt. “And what you don’t understand, my dear young man, is that some of us can’t get off without pain.”

He frowned. “Isn’t that a little…abnormal?”

She shook her head. “Less so than you might think. You simply need to find a lover that will match your need to give pain, with their need to receive pain.”

He clutched the arms of his chair. “But I don’t want to hurt anybody!”

She tilted her head and winked. “If pain brings them joy, where’s the hurt?”

He shook his head. “This isn’t making sense.”

She smiled broadly. “Which is precisely why I am here. Tell me, Ravnos, have you ever spanked someone?”

“Huh?” He frowned. “As in, slapped their ass with my hand? Like a child?”

She chuckled. “I’ll take that as a no.” She pulled off her jacket.

He shrank back into his chair. “What are you doing?”

“Administering therapy.” She tugged up her skirt, showing stockings that ended at the top of her thighs and silky white panties. “Would you be so kind as to turn your chair to the side?”

He turned his chair, interested and somewhat aroused in spite of himself. His dick was already at half-mast. “What are you planning to do?”

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“I am going to lie across your lap, and you are going to smack my ass. You are going to smack it hard enough to make it nice and red, and then we will go from there.”

He blinked and felt the blood rush downward to swell his cock. He wanted to smack her ass. “How hard?”

“Hard enough to make a nice, clean handprint.” She tossed him a grin. “Preferably several.”

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Chapter Sixteen

On his twenty-first birthday, in the austere stateroom of the Agency sweeper Machiavellian, Commander Aubrey Ravnos removed his royal blue first officer’s coat.

With quick, efficient movements, he slipped his arms into a black and silver captain’s greatcoat marked with the insignia of the demon-class dreadnaught Hellsbreath.

Captain Maria Melchior of the demon-class dreadnaught Reaper lifted a sheathed, silver-chased, live-steel sword and held it up crosswise, presenting it to Ravnos.

Ravnos accepted the blade marked with his new ship’s insignia with a slight bow, then buckled the sword-belt over the floor-length black coat.

The coat and weapon were holdovers from a more romantic time when ships sailed the seas rather than the stars. However, instead of the archaic tempered steel of the original officer’s saber, the live-steel of Ravnos’s mimetic blade practically hummed with nanites. The sword would return to shape from a forty-five-degree bend, would never lose its edge, and would withstand extremes in temperature, such as the absolute cold of space, without shattering. It would hold the perfect shape of its making for as long as it existed. Live-steel was said to be born, not made.

Captain Sear of the Machiavellian and Captain Melchior lifted their champagne glasses in quiet ceremony.

Ravnos lifted the delicate champagne glass in acknowledgment of their toast.

Once upon a time, he’d been little more than a half-wild kid struggling with strange drives and stranger urges. It had been quite a struggle, but at last, his life was orderly, perfectly under his control, and filled with purpose.

Captain Sear flopped onto the plush black leather couch and set his booted feet on the smoked glass table before him. Starlight from the broad window behind him showing open space sparkled on his mirror-shined boots. “So, now that you’re a respectable captain—”

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Ravnos snorted.