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She had it easy. She had zero expectations stacked against her. But still—Kaia made her own way in the world. She took it by the balls in ways he couldn’t even fathom. And something about her tangled mop of flame orange hair, her huge green eyes, her freckled nose and the UV spots on her cheeks, was fucking magnetic.
As he watched her babble about her adventures, Orion wasn’t sure if he wanted to fuck her or conquer the world with her.
Or both.
Shit. It might be both.
Orion could just see the crazed look on his mother’s face if he brought Kaia back toColossalwith him. When he told her he was marrying a nobody, an outlaw pilot making a living picking scraps from murdered ships? Mare Halena would have a coronary before she had a chance to die of cancer.
Hell, it wasn’t even a bad idea. If he had to go spend the rest of his few hundred years cooped up on a colony, he may as well do it with someone who’d bring a little excitement to his life, at least for a while.
You’re drunk, Orion. Think this through.
Orion realized Kaia had said something and was waiting for a reply, but he'd been too preoccupied racing through the adventures they might have and the payback he could enact against his mother.
“Sorry, what?” He snapped out of his fantasies.
“I said I’ve gotta go.” Kaia was already standing, having finished her H2O. She must have finished the kerogel as well because she wobbled when her feet were on the ground.
“Easy.” Orion slid off his stool and grabbed her arm to steady her, even though he was feeling a bit like wobbling himself. There was a deep pulse low in his groin when she bit her little bottom lip and looked up at him through light brown lashes in that shy way women used as a method of seduction, but which seemed to just come naturally to her.
“I'll walk you to your cabin,” Orion said.
“Oh, I’ll be fine. I’ve walked these halls a gazillion times.”
“Then you can walk me to mine, ‘cause I have no idea where it is.”
She breathed out a shaky laugh. “What number?”
Orion blinked, and his station cabin digits floated in his NS. “Hall B, Cabin Thirty-four.”
He had tried to book a suite, but Riker 109 had none of those.
Kaia brought a black finger to her chin and turned in place, delicate brow furrowing as she oriented herself. Finally she stopped and pointed. “That way.”
Not waiting for him to follow, she stomped from the bar and into a series of narrow hallways.
* * *
Orion was sure they were lost, but Kaia assured him it was just a shortcut. They squeezed through a narrow passageway, their breathing and footsteps reverberating off the chipped walls.
Orion’s head buzzed, and it seemed like that kerogel was gaining potency in his system. The halogen lights illuminating their way overhead cast halos in his vision. The only clear sensation was the burn of Kaia’s hand in his. He realized he’d been stroking along the back of it with his thumb, her milky skin satin-smooth against him. And fuck if he didn’t only want one thing in that moment. He tasted iron on his tongue.
CHAPTER5
KAIA
Orion had divulged little about his life back at the bar, except for his exile to Mars, where he was tortured by living a life of luxury since his teenage years. Sure, being banished from your family was tough, but not comparable to half the shit people on Riker 109 had gone through. His palpable excitement at her stories of struggling through life on the station and patching up leaks was disgusting… But at least Kaia had three shots of H2O and copious amounts of free kerogel sloshing in her belly.
Now she was leadinghimto his quarters, his hand burning around her own. She wished she could take credit for such masterful seduction, but it was all him. All night she’d felt like she was just along for the ride.
“Wait,” he commanded behind her, and Kaia’s first and only instinct was to stop in her tracks, all ruminations on his flaws put to an immediate halt.
What the fuck was wrong with her?
She’d almost forgotten that the hand, large and firm around hers as he stroked lines of fire in her skin with a thumb, was attached to an entitled asshole who waved his chips around, looked down on her and everyone at the station, and didn'treallylisten to a word she’d said at the bar. Kaia had seen how his eyes had glazed over even as he plied her with more H2O. She accepted it: if he wanted to sit through her rambling for an hour in exchange for free water, she’d take it.
But when he yanked her back toward him and she was faced with the solid expanse of his chest and that coffee-mint scent, her belly contracted. And when she glanced up at the muscular neck and straight jaw and chiseled cheek before her, gnawing warmth surged between her thighs.
